THE 'OLD WATER-COLOUR' SOCIETY
VOL. I.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOOUB AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUAB
LONDON
A HISTORY
OF THE
'OLD WATER-COLOUR' SOCIETY
NOW
IRosal Society of painters in Mater Colours
WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF ITS OLDER
AND OF ALL DECEASED MEMBERS
AND ASSOCIATES
PRECEDED BY AN
ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH WATER-COLOUR ART AND ARTISTS IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
BY
JOHN LEWIS ROGET
III
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO
AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6«- STREET
1891
All rights rtserrtd
/7/J
R1-R7
V. I
762*745
PREFACE
To form a just estimate of a work of art, some acquaintance with the
artist's intention, and the conditions under which his labour has been
performed, is generally indispensable. For without an adequate per-
ception of its aim, the critic may be misled, to complain of the
absence of qualities which have been purposely suppressed, to give
praise to others that are foreign to, and may even detract from, the
1 expression of its leading motive, and to charge the artist with defects
which may be inherent in the materials or implements of his art, or
due to its prescribed limitations. If this be true of works of the
pencil, it is no less so of those of the pen. To avoid such misconcep-
tions, as well as to apportion justly the responsibilities of authorship,
the following personal statement is laid before the reader.
The original conception of this work is due to the late JOSEPH
JOHN JENKINS, long a Member, and for some time Secretary, of the
(now Royal) Society of Painters in Water Colours, who for many
years, as time and opportunity served, and as (it must unhappily be
added) his own fragile health permitted, was engaged in collecting
materials for the compilation of a history which, had it ever been
written, might more or less have resembled this. I had had no
thought of being connected with such an undertaking until, in the
month of October, 1884, I was honoured by a proposal conveyed to
me by my friends Mr. (now Sir) Oswald W. Brierly and Mr. Edward
A. Goodall, on the joint behalf of the Council of the above-named
Society and of Mr. Jenkins himself, that I should make an endeavour
to carry into effect the scheme, which his fast-failing strength had
vi PREFACE
compelled him to' relinquish. This, after one short interview with
that gentleman, when he instructed me very briefly as to the nature
of his projected book, I expressed my willingness to do. It was my
only communication with him on the subject, except to acknowledge
the receipt by instalments in the course of the next four months of
so much of his manuscript notes as he had time and strength to
arrange; and he died on the 9th of March, 1885. Some further
memoranda, apparently reserved for similar revision, were afterwards
obtained from his miscellaneous manuscripts and correspondence.
' The papers thus placed in my hands, which had to be dealt with
to the best of my unaided judgment, consisted chiefly of notes for
separate biographies, mostly of members of the Water-Colour Society,
but some of artists who flourished and died before that body came
into being ; and they also comprised a careful series of extracts from
the Society's Minutes, from its foundation in 1804 to the year 1863,
with some notes of the circumstances of its actual birth and origin.
There was little or nothing in the shape of continuous narrative
forming a history either of the Society or of Water-Colour Art ; and,
moreover, the quantity of biographical information was very unequally
apportioned among the names entered on the roll. Of the lives of
some, especially those of the earlier artists,1 there were full and
interesting details hitherto unpublished, while in other cases the
record was an absolute blank. Unless, therefore, I had been content
to treat the matter offered for publication as no more than a collec-
tion or commonplace-book of literary and artistic notes, and to
issue it in that fragmentary form, there seemed to be no way of
utilizing the whole, without entering upon the laborious task of com-
piling a history of sufficient scope to comprehend it all, together with
a necessarily large mass of supplementary matter, which would have
to be gathered from other sources. With this task I determined to
grapple. I was not prepared, however, to undertake the compilation
of a complete or exhaustive history of Water-Colour Art. This was
unnecessary for the purpose, and the choice of a more limited scope
was, I think, justified by the bulk which these volumes have attained
1 Notably in those of Cristall, Glover, Nicholson, and Varley.
PREFACE vii
without such further extension, and by the unexpected length of time
which has been required to complete them. In accordance, however,
with what appears to have been Mr. Jenkins's first intention, I have
not thought it necessary to confine this history either to a bare record
of the proceedings of the ' Old Water-Colour Society ' with the con-
tents of its exhibitions, and notices of the lives of its members.
Taking advantage of its acknowledged representative position, I have
considered its annals as forming an integral part of the history of
water-colour painting in England, and have endeavoured to define its
relations wilh other co-existent bodies, and with the general world of
Art. As, moreover, the parentage and descent, as well as the birth,
of the subject are usually recorded in a biographical memoir, so I
have included some account not only of the immediate events which
led to the founding of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, but
of its remoter origin in the practice of water-colour art during the
eighteenth century. In this preliminary history of the school, notices
will be found of the leading draftsmen of the prior period, and a
particular account of the life and times of Turner's early contemporary,
Thomas Girtin. The chronicle of the Society is carried down to the
present time, and the set of biographical notices is rendered so far com-
plete as to include those of all the deceased, together with such of the
living Members and Associates as exhibited works in the Gallery
before the death of the President Copley Fielding in 1 85 5. In compil-
ing these numerous biographies, I have endeavoured to render them
of service to collectors and students, by affording information
respecting the number, subjects, sale prices, and special gatherings of
the artists' works, and by furnishing such lists as I could gather of
published prints after their designs. These last will also serve to
illustrate the intimate connexion which has always existed between
our school of draftsmen and the engraver's art. While some attempt
has generally been made to estimate the quality of the art of indi-
vidual painters, as well as to define its scope, I have desired to abstain
as much as might be from the intrusion of original criticism, under
the belief that a record of received and contemporary opinion would
not only be of greater value, but be more appropriate to the impartial
viii PREFACE
character of a purely historical account. At the same time it is im-
possible, in treating of a subject such as the present, to divest oneself
entirely of the bias of natural tastes and predilections. Besides the
facts above referred to, which appertain to the several artists' graphic
works, I have readily admitted into the accounts of their lives such
incidents of a general nature as appeared to throw light upon character
or personal qualities, or to be calculated to impart an individual
interest to the several narratives, even at the risk of extending some
of them beyond their due proportions. This I have done in the
belief that such acquaintance with an artist's personality gives an
added interest to the work of his hand ; and, moreover, that in the
narrower circle of Art, as in the world at large —
There is a history in all men's lives
Figuring the nature of the times deceased.
The great extent to which I am indebted, not only to the memo-
randa of the late Mr. Jenkins, but to other authorities published and
• unpublished, is, I trust, duly acknowledged throughout the following
pages ; but I have also to express my gratitude for much valued and
kindly aid received alike from friends and strangers (almost without
exception) to whom I have applied for information, both in furnishing
facts and in revising some of the biographies.
In order to render the contents of these volumes the more available
for easy reference, without unduly incumbering the pages of the
Index, I have therein classified to some extent, on a uniform system,
under the names of the several artists, the facts referred to in their
respective biographies.
JOHN L. ROGET.
5 RANDOLPH CRESCENT, MAIDA HILL, LONDON, W. :
March 1891
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
( Volume I contains Books I to VI, Volume II Books VII to X.)
INTRODUCTION
WATER-COLOUR DRAWING AND PAINTING
BOOK I
WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Chapter I. Early Topographic prints. II. Sandby and the Rise of Exhibitions.
III. Gentlemen's Seats— Architectural Topography. IV. Picturesque Topography.
V. Travelling Artists ; and Alexander Cozens. VI. John Cozens and John Smith.
VII. Teachers, Draftsmen, and Dilettanti.
BOOK II
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN
Chapter I. Turner and Girtin as Students and Reformers. II. Girtin and his Companions.
III. The Last years of Girtin. IV. Girtin and Turner as Contemporary Artists.
BOOK III
THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY
Chapter I. Exhibitors' Grievances— Wells and Shelley. II. Hills, Pyne, and Pocock.
III. Nicholson. IV. The Varleys ; Nattes ; and Gilpin. V. The Society Founded
— Barret and Cristall. VI. Glover, Havel!, Holworthy, and Rigaud.
BOOK IV
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
Chapter I. In Brook Street, 1805, 1806. II. In Pall Mall and Bond Street, 1807, 1808.
III. At Spring Gardens, 1809 to 1812. IV. Fall of the First Society.
x SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
BOOK V
THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820
Chapter I. A New Society. II. Members of the Old Society. III. John Varley.
IV. Landscape ; and the Rising School. V. Ackermann ; and some of his Draftsmen.
VI. Some Figure Painters. VII. William Hunt ; and other Exhibitors. VIII. Restor-
ation of the Water-Colour Society.
BOOK VI
THE PRESIDENCY OF CRISTALL, 1821-183!
Chapter I. Settlement in Pall Mall East. II. The old Members. III. Scholars ol
the old School. IV. Prout; and the Architects. V. Later Picturesque Landscape.
VI. Figures, Animals, and Still Life.
BOOK VII
THE PRESIDENCIES OF FIELDING AND HIS SUCCESSORS
Chapter I. The Presidency of Fielding, 1832-1855. II. Deaths and Retirements,
1838-1847. III. Deaths and Retirements, 1848-1855. IV. The Presidency of Lewis,
1855-1858. V. The Presidency of Tayler, 1858-1870. VI. The Presidency of
Gilbert.
BOOK VIII
OLD MEMBERS WHO SURVIVED FIELDING
Chapter I. Exits, :856-i859. II. Exits, 1859-1862. III. Exits, 1863-1865. IV. Exits,
1866-1889.
BOOK IX
ACCESSIONS UNDER FIELDING
Chapter I. New Associates, 1832-1837. II. New Associates, 1838-1847. III. New
Associates, 1848-1849. IV. New Associates, 1850-1854.
BOOK X
LATER MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES DECEASED
Chapter I. Deaths 1855-18^1. II. Deaths since 1881.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I
INTRODUCTION
WATER-COLOUR DRAWING AND PAINTING
PAGE
The first water-colour exhibition — Nature of modern water-colour art — Transparent
pigments— Development of practice— From monochrome to local colour — Influence
of national taste. ............ 1-6
BOOK I
WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS
Water-colours developed in application to landscape — First demand for simple topo-
graphy—Allied more to history than to poetry — Architect draftsmen — Maps and
bird's-eye views— Hollar, Loggan, and Burghers—' Britannia Illustrata' — Demand
for ' gentlemen's seats ' — Conventional perspective — Light-and-shade not .used for
'effect '—Buck's views — Low state of art — Boydell— Kirby — Highmore — Scott . 7~'7
CHAPTER II
SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS
Paul and Thomas Sandby — Born at Nottingham — Military draftsmen at the Tower —
The Stuart rebellion— Go to Scotland— Paul's etchings— At Windsor — Founding of
Art Societies— Influence of exhibitions— P. Sandby's art — Want of materials —
Elected R.A.— T. Sandby's career— Paul at St. George's Row— Teacher at Wool-
wich—Patrons—Sir Joseph Banks— Charles Greville— Aquatint engraving —
Sandby's water-colours — His work as an engraver ...... 18-31
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
GENTLEMEN'S SEATS— ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY
FACE
Wedgwood's Russian service — An impetus to topographic art — Kearsley's ' Copper-
Plate Magazine'— E. Rooker — M. A. Rooker — ' Virtuosi's Museum ' — 'Oxford
Almanack' — Watts's, Milton's, and Angus's ' Seats '—Advance in line-engraving
— Woollett — Byrne — Hearne — Middiman — Byrne's ' Antiquities ' — Rooker and
Hearne compared — Architectural draftsmen — The Maltons— Carter — Wheatley—
Marlow 3^-45
CHAPTER IV
PICTURESQUE TOPOGRAPHY
Middiman's ' Views ' — Natural Scenery — Gainsborough — His influence — His love of
transparency — His camera — Wheatley in landscape — Barret, R.A. — Unfairly con-
trasted with Wilson — His career— Sir George Beaumont's panorama . . 46 50
CHAPTER V
TRAVELLING ARTISTS ; AND ALEXANDER COZENS
John Smith — William Pars — John Cleveley — John Webber — Francis Smith — William
Alexander — Influence of travellers on the Water-Colour school — Alexander Cozens
— His origin and marriage — Teaches amateurs at Bath — His method of composing
landscapes — Gainsborough and amateur sketchers — Cozens's published works . 5 '-59
CHAPTER VI
JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH
John Cozens — Teaches by example — Early drawings — His ' Hannibal ' — Influence on
Turner — Visit to Italy with Payne Knight — Buys his father's lost sketches — Second
visit with Beckford — Loss of reason— Kindness of Sir G. Beaumont and Dr. Monro
— Date of death — Character of his art — ' Warwick ' Smith — His views of Italy —
New process of painting— Engraved works ....... 60-67
CHAPTER VII
TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN, AND DILETTANTI
Drawing masters — Sandby— Grcsse — Laporte — Payne — His 'style' — Water-colours a
fashionable amusement — Society of Arts premiums — Artists' materials improve —
More topographical series— S. Ireland — Walker's ' Copper-Plate Magazine ' — Dayes
—Other draftsmen employed — Patrons and collectors — Dr. Mead— Duke of Rich-
mond— Dr. Monro — His drawing class ....... 68 79
CONTENTS
BOOK II
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN
CHAPTER I
TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS
PAGE
Girtin and Turner with Dr. Monro — Early drawings — Mutual relations — Different dis-
positions— Turner's admiration of Girtin — Girtin's birth, parentage, and early life-
Apprenticed to Dayes — Imprisonment and release — Colouring prints — London river
scenes— Works for architects — Mr. Henderson — Masters studied by Turner and
Girtin — Girtin's exhibits at the Royal Academy — Sketches in Wales — Teaches
amateurs — Taken to North by Mr. Moore — Influence of mountain scenery — Draws
again for ' Walker's Magazine ' — Changes of address — Charged with mannerism —
Processes and materials — Taking out lights — F. Nicholson and the Earl of
Warwick — Influence of Girtin's ' style ' — His perseverance — Habits when sketching
— Patrons . • 81-96
CHAPTER II
GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS
Harris the dealer — Girtin's Sketching Society — Its rules and members — Francia — His
career — Cot man — As ' Thaddeus of Warsaw ' — Old artist quarters — Barker — Pano-
ramas— Sir R. K. Porter — Battle-pieces — Girtin's view of London — What has
become of it?— Turner takes to oils— Becomes A. R. A 97-108
CHAPTER III
THE LAST YEARS OF GIRTIN
I Girtin's marriage— Moves to St. George's Row — Studio frequented— Playful letters —
Fatal illness — Goes to France — His Paris sketches — Etched and aquatinted —
Originals at Woburn— Pantomime scenes — Barker in Paris — Girtin's death and
burial— His private character— Aspersed by Dayes— Defended by family— Con-
trasted with Turner's 109-1 16
CHAPTER IV
GIRTIN AND TURNER AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
Girtin's relations— Publication of the Paris views — Fire at John Girtin's— Chambers
Hall and Mr. Jackson— Gifts of Girtin's drawings to the British Museum — Turner
and Girtin's prices— Turner's ' Norham '—Rival drawings— Turner becomes R.A.
Comparative estimates of art of Turner and Girtin— Their respective influence on
the water-colour school — Girtin's on Constable . . , . . 117-124
CONTEXTS
BOOK III
THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY
CHAPTER I
EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES — WELLS AND SHELLEY
PAGE
Kisumi of development — Water-colour art little known to general public — Exhibitions
since 1760 — Absorbed in Royal Academy — Water-colours ill seen there — Their
painters excluded from academic honours — An independent exhibition proposed —
IV. F. Wells — Birth and education — Works at the Royal Academy — Published works
— Connexion with Tuiner — Circular to draftsmen — Samuel Shelley — Birth — Minia-
tures at the Royal Academy — Copies from Reynolds — Changes of address — Paints
portraits and ' history in small ' 125-135
CHAPTER II
HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK
Robert Hills— Birth and education — Works at the Royal Academy — Ardour in sketch-
ing— Etchings begun — Takes pupils — Drawings — IV. H. Pyne — Birth and education
— Pars's school — Works at the Royal Academy — Etchings and Illustrations — Social
qualities — Historian and narrator — Instability of purpose — Plan of proposed society
— Survey of profession— Nicholas Pocock— Birth and parentage — Commands Cham-
pion's vessels — Sketches at sea — Settles in London — Early works — Paints sea fights
— Portrait by son 136-145
CHAPTER III
NICHOLSON
Francis Nicholson —Autobiography — Birth and education— Want of sympathy — With
Beckwith at York — With a copyist at Scarborough — At Pickering — Paints horses,
dogs, and game — Patrons — First visit to London — Paints seats and portraits — At
Whitby — Takes to landscape — Mode of multiplying sketches — Exhibits in London
— At Knaresborough — Fraudulent copies — Visit to Lord Bute in Scotland— At
Ripon— Draws for Walker's magazine — Travels with Sir H. and Lady Tuite —
Settles in London — Engaged in teaching — Power of water-colours — ' Stopping
mixture' — Two impostors — Society of Arts and the drawing-masters . . 146-164
CHAPTER IV
THE VARLEYS ; NATTES J AND GILPIN
fohn Parley— A. leader in the school— Cornelius Varley—Ql scientific tastes— Their
birth and parentage — John's character and early life — At Barrow's school Sketches
with Neale— Private theatricals— Tossed by a bull— Topographic tours and draw-
ings—With Dr. Monro — First studio and patrons — Early exhibits — Visits to Wales
— Havell and C. Varley's palette— J. Varley's first marriage— Addresses— /. C.
Nattes — Topographic draftsmen — Engraved works — W. S. Gilpin Drawing-
master— Birth and family— Sawrey Gilpin, R.A.— Rev. W. Gilpin . . 165-174
CONTENTS xv
CHAPTER V
THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL
PAGE
Meeting at Stratford Coffee house — The Society as first founded — Gilpin first President
— Six more members — George Barret — Birth and parentage — Early works — Exhibits
at the Royal Academy — Morning and evening effects — Frugal industry— Joshua
Cristalt — Classic taste — Birth, parentage, and early life — At Rotherhithe — Taste for
poetry fostered by mother — At Blackheath — Pollard of Morden and his Virgil —
Father's opposition — At Mr. Ewson's — Refuses china trade — At Turner's factory,
Broseley — Mary Wollstonecraft — Father ruined — Tries china-painting — Hard life
— Finds a home at Mr. Clayton's — Print-works at Old Ford — Short rations — Lives
with sister— Tries engraving — Student at the Royal Academy — Walk to Rome
proposed — Practises water-colours — At Dr. Monro's — Early works — Paints on a
panorama — George Dyer — Sketching tours — Adventure with Welsh miners— Ex-
hibits at the Royal Academy— Addresses I7S-I9I
CHAPTER VI
GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLWORTHY, AND RIGAUD
fohn Clover — Popular teacher and artist — Birth and parentage — Writing-master — Taste
for agriculture — Love of animals — Power of taming birds — Taste for music— Early
subjects — Settles at Lichfield — Marriage and family — Personal characteristics —
Diligence and activity — Sketching in Wales and Dovedale — Boyish spirit — Works
at the Royal Academy — William Havell — Birth and parentage — Artist family —
Irrepressible bent — Sketches in Wales — Exhibits at the Royal Academy — Painter
in local colour^/a»/« Holworthy — Birth and antecedents — Friend of Turner's —
S. F. Rigaitd —Figure-painter — Antecedents ...... 192-199
BOOK IV
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
CHAPTER I
IN BROOK STREET, 1 805, 1806
The Brook Street Rooms — Their antecedent uses — First exhibilionof the Society (1805)
— Sale-clerk a novelty — Classes of subjects — Profits divided — First Associates
Their previous biographies — Miss Byrne— J. J. Chalon — Robert Freebairn —
William Delamotte—P. S. Munn — R. R. Reinagle— John Smith — Francis Stevens
—John Thurston— Glover and Gilpin — Wells elected President — Second Exhibition
(1806) — Its contents — Profits divided — Shelley and his portraits — Smith a Member
— New Associates — Their previous biographies — Thomas Heaphy — Natural v.
Academic teaching — Augustus Fugin — Birth and descent — Escape from France —
Mathews the actor — With John Nash — Architectural drawings . . . 201-223
xvi CONTENTS
CHAPTER II
IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, l8oS
PAGE
The old Royal Academy's rooms— Third Exhibition (1807)— Royal sentries— Con-
tinued success — Nattes expelled — His subsequent career — Glover, President —
Heaphy and Chalon Members — Freebairn dies— Posthumous exhibits— Biographies
of new Associates— -J. A. Atkinson — Studies in Russia — Published works — William
Turner— Of Oxford— Early drawings— Fourth Exhibition (1808)— Bond Street
rooms — A rival Society — The Associated Artists — Its founding and constitution —
Leading Members — Turner and Atkinson, Members of the Water-Colour Society —
Reinagle, President — Delamotte retires — His subsequent career . . . 224-232
CHAPTER III
AT SPRING GARDENS, 1 809 TO l8l2
At Wigley's Rooms — Exhibition of 1809 — Testimonials — Changes to 1812 — Shelley
dies — Final biography — Death of Paul Sandby — Final biographies of retiring
members— W. H, Pyne — Heaphy — Biographies of new Members and Associates —
Thomas Uwins — William Payne — Edmund Dorrell — Charles Wild— Frederick
Nash— Peter De Wint— Copley Fielding— William Westall .'. . 233-265
A
CHAPTER IV
FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY
Statistics — Decline of prosperity — Further history of ' Associated Artists ' — Their
decline and fall — Proposal to extend the Society — Its dissolution — Final biographies
of retiring Members — Wells — Rigaud — Reinagle — Chalon— The ' Sketching
Society1— Westall 266-284
BOOK V
THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820
CHAPTER I
A NEW SOCIETY
Reconstitution — Oil pictures, portraits, anil sculpture admitted — Non-members allowed
to exhibit— Claim of continuity — Changes of personnel — An independent water-
colour exhibition — Final biographies of retiring Members — Nicholson — Gilpin —
Hotworthy 285 293
CONTENTS xvii
CHAPTER II
MEMBERS OF THE OLU SOCIETY
PAGE
Retrospect in 1820 —Further biographies of old Members— Havell — Patock —J. Smith
— Barret — Cristall—Gh-vei — Hills ...,..., 294 311
CHAPTER III
JOHN VARLEY
Varley a central figure — His pupils —Generosity to young artists — Nature of his teach-
ing— Exhibited and engraved works — Impecuniosity — Enthusiasm — Blake and his
visions —Belief in astrology — Published writings 312-32";
CHAPTER IV
LANDSCAPE ; AND THE RISING SCHOOL
Biographies continued to 1820 — Former exhibitors — Stevens — De Wint — Turner —
Copley Fielding — Sto/t—Nevt landscape painters — Their biographies — David Cox —
Charles Barber— Samuel Prout — G. F. Robson—H. C. Allport— William Walker
— Miss Gouli/s/aitli ........... 326-359
CHAPTER V
ACKERMANN ; AND SOME OF HIS DRAFTSMEN
udolph Ackermann — ' Repository of Arts ' — Publications — Works for amateurs —
Architectural prints and draftsmen —Biographies continued —Pugin — Wild —
f. Nash — Mackenzie — Uwins ......... 360-374
CHAPTER VI
SOME FIGURE PAINTERS
Biographies of new exhibitors— John Linnell(lo l&2Q)—Luke Clennell— James Holmes
(to 1820)— James S/efhano/ (\.o 1820)— Henry Richler (to 1820) . . . 375-388
CHAPTER -VII
WILLIAM HUNT ; AND OTHER EXHIBITORS
biography of W. Hunt (to 1820)— Short notices of other exhibitors — Figure and por-
trait—Sculpture— Animals— Topography and Landscape -The brothers Lewis -
Norwich School Minot names , . . . . . . ^8o
I.
xviii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
RESTORATION OF THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY
l-A(;i
Variations of success — Financial report — Condition of Society in 1820 — Resolution to
exclude oils — Changes of membership — Last days of Spring Gardens rooms — New
quarters — Final biographies of retiring Members and Associates — Glover — C. Varlcy
— Munn — Atkinson — Uwins — Dorrell — Linnell — Miss Gouldsmith — Death of
Pocock—~L\st of exhibitors from 1805 to 1820 — Statistics of exhibitions of Oil and
Water Colour Society ........... 397-42
BOOK VI
THE PRESIDENCY OF CRISTALL, 1821-1831
CHAPTER I
SETTLEMENT IN PALL MALL EAST
Resettlement of constitution — Third period — Exhibition of 1821— Experience of water-
colours — Fawkes collection — Final biography of Holmes— Elections and exhibition
of 1822— Lease of Gallery in Pall Mall East — Members and Associates in 1823 —
Final biographies of_/. Smith, Stevens, and Allport ..... 423-43
CHAPTER II
THE OLD MEMBERS
Increasing prosperity — Amateurs excluded — Loan exhibition — Society of British Artists
— National Gallery — Biographies continued to 1831 — Cristall— Barret— J. Varley I
—Hills— Havel! (to death)— Turner ........ 434-4^
CHAPTER III
SCHOLARS OF THE OLD SCHOOL
Biographies continued — De Wint — Copley Fielding— Cox — Kulson (to his death) —
William Hunt— Scott— William Walker 455-47
CHAPTER IV
PROUT ; AND THE ARCHITECTS
Biography of Prout continued (1819 to 1831) — Henry Edridge — Further biographies —
Pugin (1821 to death)— Wild ( 1821 to death)—/!'. Nash (1821 to 1831)— C. Moore
— Essex— Cattermole (to 1831)— CVW»za» (to 1831) 472-50
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER V
LATER PICTURESQUE LANDSCAPE
PAGE
Biographies of New Associates, to 1831 or death — H. Gastineau—J. D, Harding —
W. J. Bennett (retired 1826)— F. 0. Finch— W. A. Nesfield—S. Jackson -J.
Whichelo—S. Austin (died 1834)— G. Pyne—J. Byrne— W. Evans (of Eton)—
T. Fielding (died 1837) . . . . . . . . . 507-531
CHAPTER VI
FIGURES, ANIMALS, AND STILL LIFE
Biographies continued (to 1831) — Stephanoff—Ruhter — Biographies of new Associates
(to 1831 or death)—/. M. Wright— J. F. Lewis— P. Williams (died 1885)— A.
Chisholm— Eliza Sharps— Louisa Sharpe—J. W. Wright— F. Tayler—Miss
Byrne (died 1837) — Mrs. Fielding (resigned 1835) — Miss Scott (Mrs. Brookbank,
retired 1838) — Miss Barret (died 1836) — Various incidents — Plans for New Gallery
— Sir Thomas Lawrence's funeral — Hostile criticism — New Water-Colour Society
founded 532-558
THE
'OLD WATER-COLOUR' SOCIETY
INTRODUCTION
WATER-COLOUR DRAWING AND PAINTING
The first water-colour exhibition — Nature of modern water-colour art — Transparent pig-
ments—Development of practice — From monochrome to local colour — Influence of
national taste.
THE ' Annual Register ' for 1 805 records the death of Nelson, but
makes no mention of the following event, which nevertheless marks
an epoch of some note in the national history of the arts of peace. On
the 22nd of April in that year, a curious collection of 275 specimens
of graphic art was placed on view at ' The Rooms,' No. 20, Lower
Brook Street, Bond Street, for one shilling a head, catalogue gratis,
Whether they were entitled to the name of ' pictures ' is a question
still unsettled.1 The exhibitors used that designation, and called
themselves a Society of Painters in Water- Colours. By reason of its
novelty at least, their exhibition, until its close on the 8th of June,
was a source of unusual attraction to the fashionable dilettantioi that
London season. The novelty consisted mainly in the fact of this
being the first occasion on which so many works in the above
material, from the hands of various artists, had been shown by them-
selves, without the presence, in the same gallery, of pictures in oil.
•But the attraction was due in part also to the revelation it made of
•the strength acquired by an imperfectly recognized school of painting,
las well as to the opportunity then given to amateurs and collectors
Ipf choosing and acquiring examples of the rising art.
The following modest announcement was printed as a preface to
The catalogue : — ' The utility of an Exhibition in forwarding the Fine
1 In sale catalogues of the present day, it is usual to place what are called ' Pictures,"
leaning works in oils, in a different category from works in water-colours, these being still
ailed ' Drawings.'
B
A
2 INTRODUCTION
Arts arises, not only from the advantage of public criticisms, but also
from the opportunity it gives to the artist of comparing his own works
with those of his contemporaries in the same walk. To embrace both
these points in their fullest extent is the object of the present Exhibi-
tion ; which, consisting of Water-Colour Pictures only, must, from that
circumstance, give to them a better arrangement, and a fairer ground
of appreciation, than when mixed with Pictures in Oil. Should the
lovers of the Art, viewing it in this light, favour it with their patronage,
it will become an Annual Exhibition of Pictures in Water Colours.'
The ' lovers of the Art ' responded to this appeal. The exhibition
did become annual, and was the virtual commencement of the career
of what used to be commonly known as the Old Water-Colour
Society, but has now assumed, by her Majesty's favour, the full title
of THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS.
In order to give an adequate account of the events which led
to this experimental opening of a gallery, it is necessary to trace
back to a comparatively remote period, the growth in Britain of the
truly national art known as ' drawing,' or ' painting,' in water-colours.
It is, moreover, a first requisite to the analysis of such a subject,
that the inquirer should rightly comprehend the nature of those dis-S
tinctions between oil and water-colour art, which not only forbade the
effective display of works of the two classes in juxtaposition, but
divided British painting into two branches, that grew up side by side,
each having its separate history, and each its own manner and rate of
development.
Between ' oils ' and ' water colours,' as means of graphic represen-
tation, there are, it must be premised, certain essential distinctions
not directly dependent upon the oleaginous or aqueous character o
the fluid wherewith the painter lays on his colour. Pigments, paints
or ' colours ' (as they are often loosely called) are either opaque 01
transparent ; the sensation of colour received from them being pro-
duced in different manners in the two cases. When opaque pigmenl
is used, the light by which the sensation of colour is excited is simplv
reflected from the surface of the paint, and modified or affected b<'
the nature of that surface. When transparent pigment is used, th'e
light first passes through the coat of paint, is then reflected from the ;
surface of the material upon which that coat is spread, and finall
passes back, through the paint, a second time to reach the eye. It i
WATER-COLOUR DRAWING AND PAINTING 3
obvious that, in the second case, this light is not only affected by fil-
tration through the paint itself, but also by the nature of the surface at
the back upon which the paint is spread. Thus, although in both
cases the light really comes at first from the front, transparent colours
may be said to derive theirs virtually from the back, and so to possess
a sort of luminosity akin to that of a stained glass window. It needs
neither artist nor optician to tell us how different must be the effect
of the above two kinds of painting. In practice, however, the dis-
tinction is a broad one only. There are many degrees of trans-
parency ; and light in all cases loses something by reflection. No
pigments are absolutely transparent, or absolutely opaque. All have
more or less ' body,' as it is technically called ; and it is often hard to
say whether one or the other kind of colour predominates in a given
picture. Layers of paint, one over another, may also vary in their
power of transmitting and reflecting light. Thus the two opposite
qualities may be intermingled and contrasted with infinite variety.
But, if it should happen, as it does happen, that certain effects are
best produced by the greatest possible transparency of pigment, it
follows that the process which secures this quality is best for such
purpose. Herein lies the gist of the matter. Oil, when dry, becomes
in some degree opaque. Hence it is impossible to obtain as great
transparency with oil-colours as with water-colours ; and thus certain
powers of imitation are almost denied to the painter in oil which come
easily within the range of the painter in water-colour.
In the present day, opaque and transparent pigments are commonly
used both with oil and with water. But this was not the case during
the last century. The union of both in the same picture was then, in
England at least, almost * entirely confined to painters in oil. The
water medium, on the contrary, was used either with opaque pigments
: /alone, or with transparent pigments alone ; not with both together.
'.•Thus there have been three technical processes, each of which has
I Jhad its own objects and proper uses, and to each of which belongs a
I {separate history.
With purely opaque painting in water-colours, as with painting in
Dil, we have not much to do in these pages. Its practice began in
/cry early times, anterior to the invention of oil painting, and, under
various names and forms of tempera, fresco, gouache, body-colour, and
1 There were exceptions in the practice of miniature painters : see Redgrave's Century
\f/ J'aiiiters, i. 407.
B 2
4 INTRODUCTION
the like, has been employed by artists at home and abroad, with varia-
tions of method for its appropriate purposes. A few artists l of the
last century painted landscapes in distemper ; and the same material
was, and is, universally employed for the scenery of theatres. Land-
scape painting in tempera or body-colour was practised as a method
distinct from transparent water-colours, until modern times in the
present century, when the two kinds of material have frequently been
combined in the same drawing. But, before this modern partial
introduction of body-colour, tempera painting, pure and simple, had
entirely died out.2 Works of that kind had little or no direct influence
upon the rise of the school whose development has here to be recorded.
It was in the use of transparent water-colours that it found its strength,
and acquired its celebrity.
It is not the writer's intention to investigate by particular examples
the history of the changes of practice in the course of which this art 1
was gradually expanded from the use of a single colour, and the mere
indication of light and shade, to the employment of a full palette, and j
an imitation of all the colours of nature. The technical view of the sub-
ject has been carefully dealt with by the Messrs. Redgrave in several
publications, and to the lucid epitome by the late Samuel Redgrave
in the introductory notice to A Descriptive Catalogue of the His- \
torical Collection of Water-Colour Paintings in the South Kensington
Museum (1877), little has here to be added. Although transparent
colours had been sometimes employed in England by painters oil
miniature portraits, and had even been successfully applied to land-t
scape by Dutch artists in the seventeenth century, it was not until the
second half of the eighteenth, and through a quite independent course
of practice by our own landscape draftsmen, that the British school ofl
water-colours came into being. Beginning with chiaroscuro drawing- ,
in grey or brown, and using the pen as well as the brush, they pro -
ceeded to the suggestion of aerial perspective by the union of twcJ
simple colours, drawing near objects with the warmer, and reservinJil
the cooler for distant parts of their view. Brown with grey, or eithci
with blue, sufficed for that purpose. Then came the cautious addition (I
of a few transparent tints washed over these grey or brown or bluisl//,
shaded drawings, to give some indication of varieties of local colour i j
objects. Trees were painted green, and the sky blue, and a distinction
1 Taverner, Paul Sandby, ' Athenian ' Stuart, Barret R.A., Ac.
2 Redgrave's Century of Painters, i. 407,
WATER-COLOUR DRAWING AND PAINTING 5
made between tiles and slate, brick houses and those built of stone.
More colours were gradually introduced. But the process was still
two-fold. A shaded drawing was made in neutral tint with pen and
brush or brush alone ; and this drawing afterwards stained with varied
hues, as a child would colour a print. At length it was perceived that
the broken ' colours, resulting from this grey under-coat's appearing
through and modifying the brighter film above, might be got at in a
more direct way. The same hues were obtainable by mixture. More-
over, grey itself was the union of all the primary colours.2 Thus it
was found that three well-chosen paints, inclining to blue, to yellow,
and to red, were enough, in the hands of a competent artist, not only
to suggest the different colours of objects and their forms and shadows,
but to diffuse throughout a landscape its proper quality of daylight.
The essential elements of the art, in its mature form, were then well-
nigh complete. The preparatory drawing in neutral tint was dis-
carded. Local hues of objects, whether in sunshine or shadow, were
painted at once as the artist saw them, and then toned down and
adjusted with grey and such other colours as the case might require.
To effect particular objects, certain simple methods were about
the same time discovered and resorted to, which, without having
special reference to variety of hue, greatly increased the vigorous
effect of water-colour, and its power to express light by contrast
and gradation. Richness and depth were obtained by repeated
washes. When some progress had been made with a drawing, and
much of the capacity of the paper to reflect light had unavoidably
been lost under superincumbent layers of paint, it was found easy
again to lay bare its pure white surface ; either wholly, in small well-
defined portions ; or partially, over a wider space. This was effected
in the first case by moistening the colour with a hair pencil and re-
moving it entirely with an absorbent rag and bread ; and in the
sjbcond, by washing off a portion of the pigment so as to render more
transparent that which remained. Sparkling touches of sunshine
i
1 By broken colours we understand those colours ' which reach the eye mixed with faint
White, that is to say, grey light, but in which the specific character of their hue is still ex-
jlessed with tolerable decision.' Von Bezold's The Theory of Color, Koehler's Translation,
Boston, 1876, p. 97.
2 Strictly speaking, a union of all the colours, that is to say, coloured rays, in their due
-oportions, produces white light. But an admixture of two pigments has the effect of ex-
uding, or quenching as it were, by the resistance of one or the other, all colour which is
ot common to the two. Hence the admixture of all the pure or primary pigments, that is
say, those which have no colour in common, produces black or grey.
6 INTRODUCTION
were produced by the former means ; and, by the latter, tender
gradations of light and atmosphere. With devices such as these,
the use of opaque colour became altogether unnecessary ; the painter
having acquired what proved to be as efficient, and often more ready,
as well as more subtle, means of expression. These experiments,
with others, more in the nature of tricks of the brush, which were
resorted to by particular artists, may be regarded as incidents of
practice. But the main step in advance, which effected a kind of
revolution in water-colour art, and raised it from mere drawing to the
dignity of painting, was the direct use of local colour, without the
customary foundation of grey. The introduction of this method,
towards the close of the last century, is generally ascribed to Turner
and Girtin ; though it may be doubted whether others were not
entitled to some share of the honour. It seems in any case to have
marked the period when our artists began to look at the colour of
a scene in nature as a thing of beauty to imitate for its own sake.
To art-students of the present day, with the models now before
them, and the materials they have at hand, it may appear strange
that this process of painting, so obvious to them, so simple, so
naturally adapted to the representation of what they see, one in accord
moreover with the long-established methods of painters in oil, should
yet have remained for so many years undiscovered, should have taken
so long a succession of artists to prepare its way, and have only been
reserved to men of great original genius to reduce it first into practice.
The explanation is to be sought for, not in any want of capacity
on the part of these early practitioners, the precursors or founders,
whichever we may choose to call them, of our school of water-colours,
but in their motives of action. The gradual advance in technique
which culminated in the days of Turner's maturity will be found toJ
have been regulated, step after step, by the nature of the demands
made upon professional talent. Their methods of work, and th«
materials they used, were enough for the purpose in hand at the timq.
being. As culture advanced and taste improved, other and higher
tasks were set before them, and then they employed new method
and needed and obtained better materials. Thus the history c,
technical progress, fascinating as it may be to the artist and con
noisscur, and valuable to the collector as a means of assigning its true
period to a work of art, derives a wider interest and a higher valu
from the indication it affords of the progress of national taste.
BOOK I
WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS
Water-colours developed in application to landscape— First demand for simple topography-
Allied more to history than to poetry —Architect draftsmen — Maps and bird's-eye views —
Hollar, Loggan, and Burghers— ' Britannia Illustrata' — Demand for ' gentlemen's seats '
— Conventional perspective— Light-and-shade not used for ' effect ' — Buck's views— Low
state of art— Boydell— Kirby— Highmore — Scott.
IT is chiefly in its application to landscape, as opposed to figure sub-
jects, that we are able to trace the rise and development of water-
colour painting. For its course has mainly been governed by the
progressive appreciation of landscape painting in Great Britain. A
complete account of the varying mental stand-points from which the
objects and scenes and natural phenomena that come within the wide
category of Landscape have from time to time been regarded by the
artist's patrons and employers, would show how closely his practice
in that branch of art has conformed to their successive valuation of
such things and appearances, both as worthy of his representation,
and as adapted to their own tastes and requirements. The special
course of landscape art which has here to be followed is thus in its
earlier stages intimately connected with the then favourite study of
feritish topography.1 Not only is its germ to be found in illustrations
i/f this kind, but some of the greatest triumphs of its palmy days
were achieved in the same service.
I | ' The word ' topography ' is here used in its ordinary sense of place-drawing, or the
[Description ofa particular spot. Ruskin, in Modern Painters, iv. 16 (part v. ch. ii.), makes a
tinction between ' simple ' and ' Turnerian ' topography, as being two separate branches ot
andscape art, the one historical, the other poetical. Mr. P. G. Hamerton, in his book on
Landscape (pp. 170-174), seems to apply the term ' topographic drawing ' to purely imitative,
is compared with suggestive representation, and in such sense to place it in a third category
the scientific branch of landscape drawing.
8 WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
To modern eyes the efforts of our earlier topographers appear
crude indeed, if we look upon them in the abstract as works of art.
Yet, regarded in the concrete, they have qualities in common with
some of the most artistic productions of their successors, and these
qualities may entitle them to higher consideration than they some-
times receive. The fact of an old topographic print's being stiff
and devoid of the sensuous charm of beauty need not disentitle it
to respect as a characteristic embodiment of the important features
of the place or object depicted. The producers of such works were
content to describe in the simple graphic language of their day the
outward appearance, not only of the objects, but of the people among
whom they lived, costumed as they really were, and engaged in their
ordinary pursuits. Thus setting forth, though in a rude way, ' the very
age and body of the time, his form and pressure,' their art, such as
it is, preserves for us the evidence of contemporary observers ; and,
so far, deserves the name of ' historical painting ' by a better title
than does the fancy picturing of a doubtful event some thousands of
years after it may be conjectured to have happened. No doubt there
is enough to despise in our ancestors' conception of the picturesque
beauties of the land ; but we at least learn from these topographers
what were regarded in their time as its prominent features. They
indicate, even by their omissions, to what kinds of visible objects
public interest was then chiefly confined.
It being the topographer's aim to disseminate instruction as well
as to please, the designs of many of our earlier draftsmen are known
only through prints, for which their sketches or drawings have been
but the preliminary stage. Not unfrequently they were their own
engravers. A sufficiently succinct view of this period can therefore
be obtained from a survey of published engravings.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century the subjects chosen
for the exercise of the landscape draftsman's imitative skill seem to
have been almost restricted to buildings, singly or in groups. He-
must already have been employed in the more direct service of archi-
tecture ; and the technical history of his art might more properlyj
begin with the early training he received when the buildings whi
he was afterwards called upon to depict existed only in design. The!
English architects of the Tudor and Jacobean times, and of t
Italian Renaissance of the seventeenth century, both drew themselves
and must have employed draftsmen to copy fairly their original I
CH. I EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS 9
designs and lay them down to scale for working purposes. Many of
these were probably foreigners. Italians are believed to have been
largely employed by Inigo Jones, who also was himself a powerful
draftsman. Drawings in Indian ink executed in the early part of
the eighteenth century from the designs of Vanbrugh, have been pre-
served, and a great many highly-finished drawings of this kind from
designs of Inigo Jones's were made by the architect Henry Flitcroft for
the Earl of Burlington. The latter are in the collection of the Duke
of Devonshire. The Earl of Burlington lived from 1695 to 1758,
and Flitcroft from 1697 to 1767. Among architectural illustrations
of the early part of the eighteenth century, one of the most impor-
tant is the work entitled Vitruvius Britannicus, first published in
1717, from drawings by one Charles Campbell. Inigo Jones's designs,
collected and reproduced by the architect Kent, were published in
1727; and James Gibbs's Book of Architecture in 1728. 'Most
drawings of this date,' says a professional critic, ' have a grey and
monotonous effect, the windows being treated as mere holes in the
wall.'1 It is only in recent times that the architect's draftsman has
been called upon to present in a pictorial form — sometimes even to
glorify — projected buildings. In the primitive period now referred
to he had not advanced beyond facades and elevations in one colour.
Perspective, as well as varied colour and general effect, followed
after.2
And so it was with the topographer. But he, having to deal with
the horizontal surface of the earth, laid down his subject first upon
the flat, instead of upon a vertical plane. Old charts contain the
germ of topographic landscape. They are often not merely ground
plans, but are dotted with representations of objects of interest,
making no attempt, however, at continuous perspective. From this
the transition is not great to the kind of bird's-eye view which we
have in Ralph Agas's maps, executed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ;
and the next step brings us to a method of topographic illustra-
tipn employed at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the
\irious and interesting plates engraved between the years 1709 and
;,63, and collected in four folio volumes under the title Britannia
j'l
•J ' Mr. Maurice B. Adams, A. R. I.E. A., in a paper on Architectural Illustration, read
jwlfore the Architectural Association, 12 Jan. 1877.
]j 2 The first coloured drawing, of a strictly architectural subject, exhibited at the Royal
(Academy, is said to have been a view of Seaton Delaval, sent there in 1815 by John
[liobson, F.R.I.B.A., hereinafter mentioned as a pupil of John Varley's.
io WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
Illustrata. Similar plates are contained in county histories published
during this period, such as Sir Henry Chauncy's Herefordshire,
1700; Sir Robert Atkyns's Gloucestershire, 1712; and Dr. Harris's
Kent, 1719. They represent what satisfied the demand for topo-
graphic landscape throughout the reigns of Queen Anne and the first
of the Georges.
In the preceding century topographic illustration, chiefly the
work of foreigners, had had more relation to pictorial art. Hollar's
views are at least constructed on the ordinary rules of perspective.
His original drawings, however, show less mastery of the brush than
his engravings do of the etching-point. Of his architectural de-
lineations the writer ' above quoted remarks that ' the shading is
curiously executed, and at times muddy in effect. The detail scarcely
satisfies inspection, the arcades and arches having a thin, weak ap-
pearance.'
The buildings of our English universities were depicted by
David Loggan, a native of Dantzig, in about seventy brilliant prints,
in volumes entitled Oxonia Illustrata, 1675, and Cantabrigia Illus-
trata, 1688. There are also small views of buildings by Michael
Burghers, in which a distinctly artistic feeling for composition and
effect is apparent. Of these, some of the plates by him in Dr. Plot's
Natural History of Staffordshire, folio, 1686 ; White Kennett's
Parochial Antiquities of Ambrosden, &c., 4to, 1695 ; and Hutten and
Hearne's Textus Roffensh, 8vo, 1720, are worthy of study. The
aerial perspective is carefully preserved, the shadows are transparent,
and there is about them a pleasant sparkle of sunshine. The figures,
moreover, are judiciously placed, and the foliage is handled with more
freedom than was usual in the artist's day. Burghers was a Dutch-
man settled at Oxford, where between 1676 and 1723 he engraved aj
large number of the headings of the Oxford Almanack. Among the]
topographic representations in Kennett's ' Antiquities ' are also some j
bird's-eye views, more consistent in their perspective than those in
Britannia Illustrata.
To return to the last-named work : its first set of fifty-four plat /
was issued in 1709, and the first of its four volumes was published
imperial folio, in 17 14, by ' Joseph Smith at yc Pictor Shop ye West
of Exeter Change in the Strand.' Its scope is explained in a seconi
title, which runs thus : — ' Views of several of the Queen's Palaces , |
1 Mr. Maurice B. Adams, uln snfra.
I CH. I EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS 11
also of the Principal Seats of Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain
curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates.' These, with scarcely an
exception, are inscribed ' L. Knyff Delin. I. Kip Sculp.' Some of them
extend across two opposite pages. A very few of the earliest have
the names of the subjects in French as well as English. The second
volume, dated 1717, contains about sixty more views, nearly all in-
scribed ' J. Kyp Delin. et Sculp. ; ' together with a few architectural
elevations of houses on a large scale, and one or two colleges in
Oxford, some of which bear the names of other engravers. In the
later plates, contained in the third and fourth volumes, we make
acquaintance with a draftsman called Thomas Badeslade. Redgrave,
in his ' Dictionary of the English School,' tells us that this artist
practised in London 1720-1750, drew many of the seats of the nobility
and gentry, which were engraved by Toms and Harris, and made
drawings for Dr. Harris's ' History of Kent,' above mentioned, and
some other publications. Before the third volume appeared, the first
two were republished (Upcott says in 1724), with the following not
very classical announcement : —
' Note. — There is a Third Volume in hand, any Gentleman paying
Five Guineas towards the Graving, may have their Seat
inserted, it being very forward, which is only half what the
former paid.'
And the said Jo. Smith of Exeter Change offers the published
plates for sale singly, and 'all sorts of Prints and Maps for Halls,
Parlors, Stair-cases, &c.'
We have here some indication of the kind of patronage under
which native British art was fostered. As the figure painters lived by
taking likenesses of the wealthy, so landscape painters found an occu-
pation in portraying their fine houses. We shall see in the sequel how
large a part of the work assigned to British artists has been this task
of depicting what are called ' gentlemen's seats.' But the mode of
treating such subjects was only in the primary stage in the first half
. of the eighteenth century. The views above referred to are no more
|Viiiienable to the laws of composition, or even of optics, than their
publisher's announcement was to those of grammar. They are framed
jit) a curious union of distinct systems of perspective, having, it may
\, three different horizons to one picture. Of the main object, usually
brand Elizabethan or Jacobean mansion standing amidst avenues
ji and gardens laid out in the quaint geometrical style of the time, we
12 WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
have perhaps a strictly bird's-eye view ; but the winged observer
drops to a lower level to survey the distant landscape ; while living
objects in the foreground are seen as by a spectator on foot. Thus
the bird whose eye the artist borrowed must have been of the breed
introduced by Sir Boyle Roche ; for these ' prospects ' are taken from
at least two places at a time. Indeed, as Cerberus managed to be
' three gentlemen at once,' so Kip's prints are as many views rolled
into one. Such conventional combinations were no great novelty
after all. They had their precedents in earlier times, and were
repeated in those yet to come. Mediaeval artists were wont to unite
in a single scene events occurring at different moments. As they
dealt with time, so too, in an after age, did the great Turner deal with
space. He sometimes fetched from their true localities the component
parts of his scene, that he might give in one coup d'csil the complete
description of his subject. And so these early topographers of the
eighteenth century, in uniting their three or more schemes of perspec-
tive, and giving a peripatetic view of the scene, were merely adopting
a different device to accomplish a like end.
Notwithstanding the inconsistency of their arrangement, these
representations convey a curious sense of reality. They are carefully,
in many cases vigorously, engraved ; and the whole scene being re- \
presented in full sunshine, the several objects are made to stand out
solidly from the earth ; and a certain unity is effected which prevents
an uneducated eye from perceiving the incongruity of the drawing.
They are full of matter ; enlivened with countless figures and objects,1
which, small as they are, tell their historic tale, of the habits a:id
manners of the time. Six-horse coaches with running footmen roll
up the stately avenues ; guests at the grand house play bowls on the
green sward ; the master mounts his hunter for a run with the hounds ;]
pasture and arable land are duly distinguished by herds and flocks,!
and harvest scenes ; deer are in the park ; and heavy wains with long-J
drawn teams lumber along the high road. Absurd as the drawing is,
as a whole, there is in these views a picture more full and compreheri-I
sive in its way than many an artistic landscape of modern times. Ai
they probably supplied the demand in the most convenient way.
this day, there are no better prints of the kind ' for Halls, Parlo
Stair-cases, &c.'
1 The English language wants an equivalent to the German slaffage, signifying the livii
incidents of a landscape.
CH. I EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS 13
But topographic engravings, such as these, afforded neither scope
nor opportunity for artistic treatment, or ' effect.' There is a strong
family likeness in Kip's views. Even when the attempt was made to
represent a scene as it could appear to the eye, the draftsman does not
seem to have thought of rendering it in a subjective manner. A faint
dawn of pictorial cJiiaroscuro may sometimes be detected ; but arrange-
ments of light made for the guidance of the eye are nearly always
limited to the artificial darkening of the upper and lower edges of the
print or drawing, as a sort of border to give relief and confine the
attention to the ' prospect ' beyond or between these two parallels.
Sometimes a shade may be thrown across the middle distance to
separate one set of objects from another ; but the main use of shadow
in the hands of the purely topographic draftsmen of the old school
was to give solidity and distinctness ' to the specific objects repre-
sented. And in the days when ' Boetry and Bainting ' were at a
discount at Court, Beauty for its own sake is not to be regarded as
an aim in this species of art.
The opposite conditions under which the early topographer and
the modern painter of landscape pursued their respective callings are
well set forth by the Messrs. Redgrave in the following passage :—
' The exact transcript of local objects, places, or antiquities natu-
rally required a clear daylight, unobstructed by clouds or shadows,
and free from that mystery of light and shade, so important a feature
in art, by which the painter gives variety and contrast, and hides any
unimportant or ugly features of the scene. Simple literal truth is all
that is required of the topographer. The artist's aim is general truth
and the vivid impression of scenery as a whole, and under those
varied circumstances which elevate it from the commonplace into the
poetical.' 2
Belonging to the same period, but also continued to a later date
than the ' prospects ' of Knyff and Badeslade, are the long series of
plates bearing dates from 1720 to 1753, by Samuel and Nathaniel
Buck, generally known as ' Buck's views.' They may be taken to
.—present the taste and progress of topographic art in England
CM 17
I' fing much of that period. Samuel, who long survived his brother
ithanicl, was the chief draftsman and engraver of this compre-
1)0
P See Mr. Hamerton's remarks in The Graphic Arts, pp. 348, 349, on Albert Diirer's
HI! which the author describes as explanatory and not pictorial, the outline and shadow
aljlig for definition, not for chiaroscuro.
|| " Century of Tainters, i. 374.
al j
14 WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
hensive work. ' His drawings,' says Redgrave,1 were ' hasty and
slight, but in some instances elaborately finished with pen and ink
and tinted.' He lived from 1696 to 1779. His 'views/ originally
issued in separate numbers, were collected and published in 1774,
by Robert Sayer of Fleet Street, in three folio volumes, with the
title Buck's Antiquities ; or 'venerable Remains of above 400 Castles,
Monasteries, Palaces, etc., etc.,' with nearly 100 views of 'Cities
and Chief Towns.' During the first six years (1720 to 1725 accord-
ing to dates on the prints) the name of ' S. Buck ' alone appears
upon the plates. That of ' N. Buck' is added in 1726. The
drawing in these early views is feeble even to childishness. The
subjects chosen are, curiously enough, the same which, a hundred
years after, were treated by the greatest of landscape painters in some
of the finest of his works in water-colours. They are chiefly the
Abbeys of Yorkshire (Nos. 230-235, etc., in vol. ii.). A comparison
of No. 32O,2 ' Bolton Abbey— Samuel Buck del. 1720 et sculp.,'
with Turner's drawing of the same ruin engraved by Wallis in the
'Picturesque Beauties of England and Wales,' 1838, would exhibit
the two extremes of landscape art and landscape engraving. In
these early prints of the series there is little or no imitation of
actual texture. Ruined walls have none of the look of crumbling
stone. Edged with fringes of vegetation neatly trimmed, like
whiskers, they are themselves perfectly smooth, as if cut out in wood or
card,3 showing marvellous coherence in broken arches and masonry.
The sky is usually expressed by a few horizontal strokes for
clouds, or, it may be, some scanty indications of rounded cumuli.
Generally, a large portion of the paper is left blank, all but near
objects being simply omitted. By 1730 there is more feeling
of texture, more general tone is introduced, and the perspective
is more consistent. The improvement continues for the next half-
dozen years. Some plates of 1738 and the year or two which follow
are in a different manner, with more freedom of touch and atmospheric
softness. The views of 'Cities and Chief Towns ' (about 10x23
inches large, and extending across two pages) are rarely such as coj.
be seen from an attainable point, and sometimes even partake of
1 Dictionary of the English School.
* The numbers and dates given are those of the copy in the British Museum Library;'
» Batty Langley's drawings of so-called ' Gothic' architecture, published in 1742, '
Adams declares to be ' suggestive of cast-iron.' — Ubi supra.
CH. I EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS 15
character of the bird's-eye representations of an earlier type. Num-
bers, for reference to a footnote, and even names at length, are printed
over the face of the subjects ; and that of a river may often be seen
swimming in mid-stream, and helping the eye to distinguish land
from water. So indeterminate is the manner of expression. A care-
ful continuous view of the London bank of the Thames from Millbank
to the Tower, which extends through five numbers, leaves little to
desire as a strictly topographic record. In the latest town views,
and in some of the gentlemen's seats, there is a better grasp of the
subject as a whole. The foreground is often graceful, and figures
and animals give interest and reality to the scene and show the
habits and costumes of the time. In the other plates the incidents
are rare ; unless it be in connection with water subjects, where ship-
ping and boats are plentiful, and afford specimens of the high-pooped
vessels of the period. It is difficult, however, to trace, year by year,
the progress of improvement, as some of the dates upon the copper
having been altered after repairs, the prints do not always bear true
evidence of the year when a plate was first issued.
Contemporary works of the same class, though of various degrees
of merit, were much of the same average quality as Buck's views.
Topography had greatly declined since the days of Loggan, Burghers,
and Hollar, and had not as yet regained new strength. In Dr.
Stukelefs antiquarian publications (1740 to 1743), for example, the
views are contemptible.
But the art of engraving had sunk so low as to be incapable of
doing justice to drawings of any artistic refinement. Boydell declares '
that in or about 1740, when he was apprenticed to Toms, there were
no engravers of any eminence in this country. This appears to be
strictly true with regard to landscape. And in ' historical ' engraving
(so-called) Vertue, and perhaps Hogarth, had hitherto stood alone as
representatives of native talent. Better times were soon to follow,
and at the end of the same decade, when the art had been studied by
young Englishmen abroad, an important school of engraving was
l*^<iut to arise in this country.2 But many more years had to elapse
Jrire the best hands came to be employed in translating for the
/ n .-ral eye the works of our topographic draftsmen.
' iBoydell himself, who did so much by his liberality and enterprise
lief
1 Preface to his collection of views republished in 1790.
2 See Pye's Patronage of British Art, 54, 55.
16 WATER-COLOUR ART IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. r
to foster native talent for art, did indeed assist by the work of his
own hand, and, with such limited graphic power as he possessed, in
raising the level even of this branch of art. The first step towards
the acquirement of his fortune was the publication by him, in 1741,
when he was a young man of twenty-two, of some shilling views in
and about London. They afterwards were extended to other parts
of England, and included Castles and Mountainous Views in Wales,
and were carried on till 1755. They were certainly a considerable
advance upon Stukeley, and even upon Buck. ' These views,' says John
Pye,1 writing in 1845, 'looked at now, the distance of nearly a century
from their date of publication, are remarkable evidence of the changes
which that space of time has made, alike in the various localities they
represent, in the public taste for works of art, and in the state of art
itself. In the present day such talent as they evince would not
enable an artist to live ; yet they originated for Mr. Boydell the fame
and fortune which he acquired.'
Among the topographic prints of this period there were twelve
views of Monasteries, Castles, Ancient Churches and Monuments in
the County of Suffolk, drawn and etched by John Joshua Kirby, 8vo,
1748. These, with a number of others, were made by him for an
intended history of that county, whereof his father was a local
antiquary. Kirby's name became well known afterwards by his
activity in the affairs of his profession, and his career as a draftsman
is linked with later and more artistic times by a tradition that it
originated in an early friendship with a much more distinguished
man, Thomas Gainsborough. Born in 1716, he was eleven years old
when that painter came into being, and his friend had attained that
age when Kirby began business as a coach and house painter at
Ipswich. In that town Gainsborough came to settle with his wife
in 1745, and it is said to have been he who inspired Kirby with
ambition to try his hand at landscape, the result being these topo-
graphic views. Others followed, engraved by John Wood, who
worked for Boydell. In 1754 Kirby read three lectures on perspective
at the St. Martin's Lane Academy. He became F.R.S. and
and taught architectural drawing to George III. when Princ
Wales. He published some works on perspective, one of whit
Dr. Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective made Easy, &c.,
1 Patronage of British Art, 57 ».
CH. I EARLY TOPOGRAPHIC PRINTS 17
1754, for the frontispiece whereof Hogarth designed a famous carica-
ture.1 His architectural drawings, some of which are preserved at
Windsor Castle, show considerable mastery in the management for
such limited purposes of transparent water-colours.
Among the topographic drawings of this period should be
mentioned those of English landscapes, with views of towns and
buildings, made by John Baptiste Claude Chatelaine (or Chatelain},i\\e
engraver, some of which he etched and published in a little book,
now very scarce, entitled Fifty Small Original and Elegant Views
of the most splendid Churches, Villages, Rural Prospects, and Masterly
Pieces of Architecture adjacent to London, 8vo, 1750. The drawings for
these are said to be ' hatched with chalk and thinly tinted with colour,
having a very unpleasing coarseness of effect.' 2
Besides the draftsmen, strictly so called, of topographic subjects
during the period above mentioned, there were also certain painters
in oil who practised in the same line, and from whose pictures con-
temporary engravings were made. Among them was Antlwny
Htghmore, son of Joseph Highmore, the latter of whom was best
known as a portrait painter. But his works survive only in eight
large prints of Kensington and Hampton Court, engraved by John
Tinney about 1740. Samuel Scott, who painted marine subjects as
well as London views, is better known, and, besides painting in oil,
was one of the early draftsmen in water-colours. Walpole goes so
far as to call him the father of that art. He was born in London
about 1710, and died at Bath in 1772.
1 Hogarth's drawing for this print was in the Esdaile collection, and afterwards in that
of the late Dr. Percy, and sold at Christie's on 17 April, 1890.
• MS. notes by the late John W. Papworth, kindly furnished by his brother Mr. Wyrlt
Papworth, F.R.I.B.A.
abo
bcf,
1
i8 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
CHAPTER II
SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS
Paul and Thomas Sandby— Born at Nottingham— Military draftsmen at the Tower--The
Stuart rebellion— Go to Scotland— Paul's etchings — At Windsor— Founding of Art
Societies — Influence of exhibitions — P. Sandby's art — Want of materials — Elected K.A.
— T. Sandby's career — Paul at St. George's Row— Teacher at Woolwich — Patrons-
Sir Joseph Banks— Charles Greville— Aquatint engraving— Sandby's water-colours—
His work as an engraver.
SUCH was the condition of topography in the middle of the last century,
when a draftsman came into the field who had taste and originality
enough to bring new influences to bear upon the work, and infuse an
element of fine art into this kind of illustration. The year 1752, when
Paul Sandby came to reside with his brother Thomas at Windsor, and
set up there as an artist, was an epoch of importance in the story
which these pages have to tell. The two brothers were born in
Nottingham, and came of an old county family, but are said to have
begun life by keeping a school together in their native town. If so,
they must have been singularly young preceptors. For we are further
told by the same authority1 that, by the interest of the borough
member, they obtained an introduction to the military drawing office
of the Tower of London in 1741, when, if the dates of their births be
correctly given, Thomas was twenty and Paul only sixteen. It is
probable that the elder went there first, and the younger followed in
1746, when he was twenty-one years old.'2
In this course of military drawing the brothers were doubtless
1 Redgrave's Dictionary of the English School.
2 Biographers are not agreed as to the dates. Bryan, Pilkington, and others gi
as the date of Paul's birth, and say that he came to London at the age of fourteen
1746), and, after studying for about two years at the Tower, was in 1748 ap
draftsman to the Scotch survey. Redgrave, with others, gives 1725 as the datt
birth, and sends him to the Tower in 1741 (i.e. at sixteen), and to Scotland in 17.
William Sandby's History of the Royal Academy (2 vols. 1865-6), 1746 is given as 1
of Paul Sandby's going to the Tower, 1725 as that of his birth, and 1753-4 of his
with Hogarth, as to which see below.
>uld
the
Mr.
,CH II SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 19
drilled into habits of neatness which ever after characterized their
work. Thomas Sandby was in time appointed draftsman to the Chief
Engineer in Scotland, where, being at Fort William on duty, he was
so fortunate as to be able to give the first news to Government of the
landing of the Young Pretender in June 1 745. In the campaign which
followed he was draftsman to the Duke of Cumberland, and an eye-
witness of the battle of Culloden in the ensuing year. An interesting
sketch which he made of the field is preserved at Windsor Castle.1
Redgrave, in his Dictionary, asserts that Tom Sandby also followed
the Duke in his Flanders campaigns. There is in the Queen's collec-
tion a view by him of ' the Diest, from the camp at Meldart,' dated
1747 ; and Mr. William Sandby has some undated sketches of the camp
near Maestricht, &c.'2 When the Stuart rebellion had been crushed,
Tom Sandby received the peaceful post of Deputy Ranger of Windsor
Great Park, of which the Duke of Cumberland was Ranger; and his
brother Paul was sent to Scotland as draftsman to a survey of the
Northern and Western Highlands undertaken by Government for the
improvement of the roads. In the romantic scenery by which he was
now surrounded, the artist element in Paul Sandby's disposition
asserted its predominance. He drew the plans required of him, but
at the same time indulged his pencil in making picturesque sketches.
After a time, growing weary of his allotted task, and taking more and
more delight in this employment of his leisure, he abandoned the
military career for that of the artist. To the practice of topographic
drawing he thus brought the correct training of the surveyor's office,
and with it a free habit of sketching from nature, for which he had
enjoyed opportunities such as had fallen to the lot of few of his
predecessors.
For the most part, the sketches which he made in Scotland
scarcely prepare us to expect the devotion to accurate local truth
which he exhibits in subsequent works. They are graceful combina-
tions of hill and dale, foliage, rock, and cloud, with cattle and figures
combined in easy grouping. We know them chiefly in a series of
a°° :ed etchings, mostly on a small scale, published for him (by
"e'c ^s. Ryland & Bryce) on his return to London. These have
;iig in them of dry topography, nor much indeed of local character.
1,
Ij was exhibited at the (
J-ljlon of works by the bro
Grosvenor Gallery in the winter of 1877-78 ; and in a loan
by the brothers Sandby, at Nottingham in 1884.
All these were exhibited at Nottingham in 1884.
C 2
20 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. r
In a larger ' East View of Stirling Castle,' dated 1751, and a ' West
View of the City of Edinburgh,' published by Robert Sayer and
Hen. Ovcrton, 1753 (with French title added), he however appears
already as an able topographic artist.
Thus in the commencement of his career he showed some of the
skill as an engraver which, later in life, he turned to an important
account as an aid to landscape art. ' His style of etching,' says a well-
informed critic, ' has much of the freedom of Rooker, Vivares, and
Chatelain. In the works of these artists, and of T. Major, will be
found the first examples of free as well as finished style, which, owing
to the prevalent character given to it by etching, constituted the
peculiar excellence of the practice of landscape line engraving in this
country from about the middle of the eighteenth century.' '
A few of Sandby's etchings, dated September 1750, are inscribed
' etched on the spot.' Among them are clever, and characteristic
figures, both inserted in the landscapes and drawn separately. One
portrays, in a half-length group, some of the company, perhaps the
host too, at' John Balfour's Coffee-house at Edinburgh, 1752,' with a
humorous programme of a concert in the background. Another trio
of likenesses is inscribed ' Etched from the Life on Board a Scotch
Ship,' of which it represents ' The Cook, Captain and Mait.' These
tell us something of the lively sense of humour which, added to a kind
heart and the bearing of a gentleman, made Paul Sandby a general
favourite in society, and also furnished him, when he chose to use it,
with a not inefficient weapon in professional controversy.
It was with these antecedents that the painter took up his
residence, in 1752, with the Deputy Ranger at Windsor. His position,
with the high connections his brother had formed, was one which,
while it held out promise of advancement to the young man of talent
that he had proved himself to be, gave to both the Sandbys some
voice in the deliberations of the world of art. Paul entered indus-
triously upon the work of his calling, sketching everything in the
neighbourhood, and at the same time took an active part in p-%
moling the interests of the profession he had espoused.
The time was one of national awakening in matters of tast
this year, 1752, Reynolds returned to England. Zuccarelli canfje|
and Cipriani the year after. Wilson was still in Italy, and <lfl|lj
borough at Ipswich. The talents of several of our best engju
1 Library of the Fine Arts, iii. 379, &c.
I
CH. II SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 21
(Strange, Woollctt, and others) had already begun to be acknowledged.
British artists of ability were springing into existence. But they were
not as yet associated in any public body, regularly organized to promote
the joint interests of their craft. They had educated themselves at a
subscription studio in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, founded by
Hogarth some twenty years before, where each man paid his quota
to defray the rent and provide a living model. They called it an
' academy,' and there seems to have been some kind of teaching, for,
as aforesaid, Joshua Kirby lectured there on perspective. But there
were no regular professorships, and no pecuniar)' endowment.
Hogarth indeed provided some furniture which originally belonged
to his father-in-law Sir James Thornhill, who had in his life-time
made an unsuccessful endeavour to set up a school of art. In the
middle of the last century, the ' St. Martin's Lane Academy ' was our
artists' alma mater. Their club, and chief place of rendezvous for
discussing the affairs of the profession, was the Turk's Head Tavern,
nv-^n standing at the corner of Greek Street and Compton Street,
Soho. It was there that, in the early years of King George the
Third's reign, Sir Joshua Reynolds united with Dr. Johnson, Gold-
smith, and others in founding the famous literary ' Club.' Shortly
afterwards the tavern was removed to the neighbouring Gerrard
Street.1
We do not hear, however, of Sandby's studying at St. Martin's
Lane. There could not have been much for a landscape painter to
learn there ; and he had been to a better school in the Highlands.
In 1753 the first attempt was made in London to found a public
academy of painting, sculpture, and architecture. But it proved ab-
ortive. A copy of the prospectus is reprinted in Ireland's ' Hogarth,'
which, being addressed to Paul Sandby, is evidence that Re had already
some standing in the profession. In the following year, 1754, the
Society of Arts was founded. It gave direct encouragement to the
, ictice of drawing, by the award of premiums to young students of
cut ' sexes. In 1755 a more hopeful scheme than that of 1753 was
i;j ,'n foot for the establishment of a general institution, this time
•'
Jee Laurence Hutton's Literary Landmarks of London, 1885. 'The Turk's Head
Gerrard Street, Soho, the common rendezvous,' in Wilson's time, ' for all ihe
.,,.o!ilan artists who professed ability approximating to renown.' — A. Pasquin, quoted,
rsei Home Gazette, i. 92.
22 WATER-COLOUR ART IX EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
under the attractive name of a ' Royal ' Academy. It was not,
however, intended to rest on Court favour, but on the support of the
public at large. In the list of the provisional committee the name of
Thomas Sandby appears, in company with those of Reynolds and
other leading artists of the day.
This project, which like the former came to nothing, was also the
occasion of some warm party feeling in the artist world. During
these disputes Paul Sandby was bold enough to exercise his talent
for caricature in an attack upon the arch-satirist of his day, the
veteran Hogarth himself, who was on various grounds opposed to the
new scheme. The subject of Sandby's burlesque was the celebrated
Analysis of Beauty which the great painter had published in 1753.
The caricaturist was afterwards ashamed of having turned into ridicule
so valuable a work by so eminent a man, and showed his respect for
the author by suppressing the plates which he had etched.
The publication of Hogarth's Analysis was in fact one of the signs
of an age wherein the philosophic essence of fine art was beginning to
engage the attention of cultivated minds. When abstract theories of
beauty came to be formulated, and applied to works both of nature
and art, earnest students like Sandby, who, instead of confining them-
selves to the imitation of old masters, drew from nature and reasoned
on what they drew, had a better chance of intelligent appreciation.
Hogarth's treatise led to Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful
in 1756; and to other thoughtful writings and discussions which
followed, and, in spite of errors, and the narrowness of some of the
views then entertained, tended to bring to maturity a taste for fine art.
In the next attempt, made a few years later, namely in 1759, by
a combination of artists, to obtain more effective public recognition,
Hogarth and the Sandbys are found acting in unison. The object
now was, not "to establish a teaching academy for students, but to
benefit full-blown practitioners, by means of a public exhibition of
their works. Pye, in his ' Patronage of British Art,' ' has insisted that,
a main object of the scheme was to raise a fund for the relief o
artists in distress. But human nature must have altered duriH g th
last century and a half if the projectors had not also an eye tfo th
advantage to be derived from a general show-room as a mea[ns of
advertising artists' works with a view to sale.
The idea had been suggested by the popularity of a collection of
1 See pp. 91, 95.
CH. II SANDBY AND THE RISE OF' EXHIBITIONS 23
paintings presented by their authors to the Foundling Hospital, which,
being there on view, had become a fashionable source of attraction.
The result of this new agitation was the display, in the year 1760, of
sixty-nine works of art, including ' Pictures,' ' Sculpture, Models, &c.,'
and 'Drawings and Engravings,' at some rooms then occupied by the
Society of Arts, in the Strand, opposite to Beaufort Buildings.1 This
was the first of the many exhibitions of works on sale by living British
artists, which from that time have been annually held, ever increasing
in size and multitude, until in our own day their name is legion.
Next year the association broke into two societies, which held ex-
hibitions concurrently for many years. The more important of them,
to which the leading artists mostly belonged, occupied a great room
at Spring Gardens, and received a charter of incorporation from King
George the Third, in 1765. But this society was again divided by a
secession of its chief members in 1768 ; and the seceders, among whom
were Paul and Thomas Sandby, secured the King's more immediate
patronage, and became the Royal Academy which now exists.
What concerns us here is the influence of these earlier exhibitions
upon water-colour art. When a new outlet was thus provided for
artistic talent, an important change took place in the connection
between draftsman and engraver. Hitherto the worker on copper
had furnished the sole medium through which the designer's art could
be presented to the public eye. Now their relations were altered.
Gradually they came to be reversed. The draftsman had found a
double market for his produce. It had now become his interest to
make his drawing attractive for its own sake, and desirable to possess
as an original and unique work of art, besides being suited to the
publisher's purpose of multiplying it by the agency of the press. In
course of time, but not yet, what had been an accessory was to
become the principal. Instead of drawings being made for the pur-
pose of suggesting what engravings were to be, engravings were to be
used as after-reminders of, or in some respects incomplete substitutes
for, drawings. In that after-time, the water-colour artist, mainly by
the charm of colour, was able to impart attractions to his drawing
with which no print could vie. He worked to satisfy a new demand,
and, receiving lucrative employment from a new class of patrons, he
finally became as independent of the engraver as the painters in oil
had been from immemorial time. How largely, nevertheless, even to
1 Pye's Patronage of British Art, p. 92 n.
24 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY JSK.
the latest period, many water-colour painters have still been indebted
for professional emolument to the publishers of prints and illustrated
works will amply appear in the course of the ensuing narrative.
The topographic drawings of Sandby's school hold an intermediate
position between the two classes of draftsmen above described. The
style he adopted was admirably suited for the reproduction of his
drawings by engraving, and they at the same time possessed qualities
and beauties of their own which gave them a title to be regarded as
independent works of art.
Sandby also painted in oil and in tempera. But the style which
he made specially his own, and in which his chief influence was ex-
ercised, is that which is familiarly regarded as characteristic of our
early water-colour school, the tinted drawings outlined with a pen,
shaded in grey, and finished with washes of local colour.
Artists' colourmen were unknown in those days, and Whatman's
paper was not yet made at the Turkey Mills. In the collection ' of
Mr. Edward Basil Jupp, F.S.A., there are preserved two curious
letters from Gainsborough, in the first of which, dated 10 November,
1767, that artist, then residing at Bath, requests Mr. Dodsley, who
published Anstey's ' New Bath Guide,' to send him some of the same
sort of paper as that on which the fifth edition of that amusing poem
was printed, it being what the artist had long been in search of for
making washed drawings upon.
The second letter is as follows : —
'Bath: 26th November, 1767.
' To Jas. Dodsley, Pall Mall, London.
' Sir, — I beg you to accept my sincerest thanks for the favour you
have done me concerning the Paper for Drawings. I had set my
Heart upon getting some of it, as it is so completely what I have long
been in search of. The mischief of that you were so kind as to
enclose is not only the small wires, but a large Cross wire at about
| | this distance, which the other has none of, nor hardly
any of the impression of the smallest wire. I wish, Sir, that one of
my Landskips, such as I could make you upon that paper, would
prove a sufficient inducement for you to make still further enquiry.
1 See A Descriptive List of Original Drawings, Engravings, Autograph Letters, and
Portraits, illustrating the Catalogues of the Society of Artists of Great Britain from its
commencement in the year 1760 to its close in the year 1791, in the possession of Edward
Basil Jupp, F.S.A., 1871, 410, privately printed. A presentation copy was bequeathed by
Mr. William Smith to the South Kensington Museum.
CH. ii SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 25
I should think my time well bestow'd, however little the Value you
might with reason set upon it.
' I am, Sir, your much obliged
' And most obedient humble servant,
•THO. GAINSBOROUGH.
' P.S. I am at this moment viewing the difference of that you send
and the Bath guide, holding them edgeways to the light, and could
cry my Eyes out to see those furrows. Upon my honor, I would
give a guinea a Quire for a Doz" quire of it.'
Thus Sandby and his contemporaries had to draw on common
writing-paper, with such pigments as they could get or manufacture
for themselves.1
Pale and weak as their drawings may now appear, they were at
the time of their production remarkable as the first English land-
scapes in transparent pigment in which colour was at all an element
of consideration. Sandby chiefly used vegetable pigments. In his
early drawings he employed the reed pen for outline. In his second
and improved style he subdued the rigidity of his outline and, by
repeating the tints, obtained rich and deep colour in the foreground.2
Paul Sandby contributed to the exhibition in the Strand in 1760,
and to those in Spring Gardens from 1761 to 1768, about thirty works
in all, including oil pictures and drawings in tempera. After this date
he had added the letters R.A. to his name, and could exhibit only at
the Academy.
Tom Sandby had also become an Academician, and was appointed
the first Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy. He con-
tinued to reside at Windsor, where he retained for life his office of
Deputy Ranger, planning Virginia Water, and also practising as an
architect. With a pencil less prolific than his brother's, and exercising
less influence on future art, he nevertheless takes rank with him
among the landscape topographers of his time. Redgrave even gives
him credit for ' more spirit and artistic feeling ' than Paul's. Some
early views of his native town, dated 1741-43, are in the Art Museum
there, and four are engraved in Dr. Charles Deering's Nottinghamia
Vetus et Nova, 4to, 1751. But these, though correctly drawn, follow
the conventional manner of their period, and are certainly much
1 Catalogue of the Sandby Exhibition, 1884.
* Sandhy's History of tin Royal Academy.
26 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
inferior to his brother's view of Stirling Castle published in the same
year.1 In 1761 he is recorded as the exhibitor, at Spring Gardens,
of (among other drawings) some views of the Falls of the Clyde.
Drawings by him, mostly architectural, are in the Royal collection at
Windsor, and at the British and Soane Museums. Some views in
Covent Garden were engraved after him on a large scale by Edward
Rooker, with the dates 1766 and 1/68. Graves2 finds two exhibits
by him at the Society of Artists, and nine at the Royal Academy,
between 1767 and 1782. He lived till 1798.
By the time when Paul Sandby had assumed the rank of Royal
Academician, he had left Windsor and come to reside in London.
The catalogues of 1764-5 describe him of ' Du Four's Court, Broad
Street, Carnaby Market ; ' and in 1766-8 he is in ' Poland Street' In
or before 1773 he took a house in St. George's Row (No. 4), on the
north side of Hyde Park, near Tyburn turnpike, where he resided
during the latter part of his life. The gate, which stood a little west-
ward of the spot where now stands the Marble Arch, has since been
removed, and the name of the row of houses changed to ' Hyde Park
Place,' the present No. 23 being that in which Sandby lived.3
In 1768 he also received the post of principal drawing-master to
the Military Academy at Woolwich, which he retained for the rest of
the century.
The subjects which he exhibited at the Society of Artists tell us
something of the rank and culture of his patrons and friends. The
first work to which his name is attached in the catalogues is a view
of Lord Harcourt's seat at Nuneham. Next year he had ' An His-
torical Landskip representing the Welsh bard, in Mr. Gray's celebrated
ode,' which had been published about four years. The poets Gray
and Mason, as well as Lord Harcourt, were among Sandby's personal
friends. In 1763 he shows us that he has been among the picturesque
scenery of the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, and also sends the
first of his Windsor views, representing a gate of the Castle. After
this date, he has in 1764 and 1767 views at the seats of the Dukes of
Devonshire, Bolton, Norfolk, and Grafton. With these exceptions
he finds all his subjects at Windsor. To the friends and patrons
above mentioned may be added the Earl of Buchan and Dr. Norbury
of Eton.
Wealthy and cultivated amateurs were now beginning to exercise
1 See above, p. 20. 2 Dictionary of Artists.
3 Catalogue of the Sant/fy Exhibition, 1884.
CH. II SANDI5Y AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 27
a kind of personal patronage, which was not merely confined to the
purchase of works of art, but afforded to artists means and opportuni-
ties of study, together with the elevating influence of cultured society.
This benefit Paul Sandby was one of the first to feel. He had
the good fortune, by the excellence of his Windsor drawings, to attract
the attention of a man of property, who not only bought about seventy
of them,1 but carried off the artist to scenes where he was enabled
to enrich his portfolio from subjects still better suited to his pencil.
This was Mr., afterwards Sir Joseph, Banks, the celebrated naturalist.
He was considerably younger than Sandby. Having left Oxford
in 1763, he came of age in 1764, and at the same time acquired the
command of his paternal estate. In 1766 Banks visited Newfound-
land, and in 1768 set out with Captain Cook on that navigator's first
voyage of discovery, as naturalist to the expedition, returning home in
June 1771. In 1772 he made a voyage to Iceland. It was probably
after these events, and most likely in 1774, that Sandby paid his first
visit to Wales ; for in 1775 drawings by him representing Welsh views
are named for the first time in the Royal Academy catalogues.
Besides Mr. Banks, Sandby had as a travelling companion the
Hon. Charles Greville, with whom he made several sketching tours ;
and he was also induced by Sir Watkin W. Wynn, of Wynnstay
in Denbighshire, to extend his visits to, and his illustrations of, that
part of the United Kingdom. The Hon. Charles Francis Greville was
the second son of Francis the first Earl of Warwick. He was born in
1749, and died, unmarried, in 1809. His brother, the Right Hon.
George Greville, was born in 1746, succeeded to the title, on the death
of their father, in 1773, and died in 1816. This second earl, another
of Sandby's patrons, was a prominent example of the dilettanti of his
time, and, as we shall presently see, his patronage was exercised in
various ways to the advantage of the rising water-colour school.
The acquaintance with Mr. Greville led to some important results.
Sandby was indebted to this friend and patron for information which
induced him, when past mid-age, to resume the practice of chalco-
graphy with which he had begun his artistic career. Mr. Greville had,
when abroad, been made acquainted with a new process of engraving,
peculiarly adapted to the reproduction of works in Sandby's style,
which afterwards proved of signal service to our native school of land-
scape and architectural drawing. Its name is Aquatint, or Aquatinta.
wings were sold at Christie's on 23 May, 1876, and many of them were then
purchased for Ihe Queen's Collection at Windsor.
28 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IK. I
If we compare a drawing with its reproduction in a print made by
engraving on metal, or rather, if we examine the condition of the
plate prepared for printing, we shall observe that, whereas the pen
lines of the drawing are reproduced by etched or engraved lines in
the plate, broad washes of colour have to be imitated by some kind
of roughening of its broad surface. Aquatint engraving is a process in
which the corrosion of an acid is employed to effect this roughening
of the surface, as it is employed to eat out the groove of an ordinary
etched line. To imitate a pen line of greater or less strength, the
etcher so indents the metal to a corresponding depth. To imitate
a wash, the aquatint engraver so roughens ' (more or less, accord-
ing to the required tone) a due area on the face of the plate. By a
union of these two processes on one plate, and the use of ink of a
proper colour, almost exact fac-similes can be impressed upon paper
of monochrome drawings made with pen and brush. For the repro-
duction of designs of this kind, the advantages of such a process
over the laborious imitation of shadows by an infinity of furrows and
scratches separately ploughed out with a sharp tool, are too obvious to
insist upon. Except in their final or tinting process, the drawings
of the old school, which we are considering, were simply ' line and
wash,' and were thus exactly suited to the aquatint method, if that
art could be brought to perfection.
The honour of inventing aquatint engraving is ascribed to a
French amateur, the Abbe de St. Non, author of an illustrated
Voyage Pittoresque des Royaunies de Naples et de Sidle, executed
about 1767. 'Several plates,' says Bryan,4 ' were engraved by him.'
The painter, Jean Baptiste Le Prince, learned the process from St.
Non, and himself employed it successfully. Le Prince is said to
have sold the secret to Mr. Greville, who suggested its use to Paul
Sandby for the reproduction of his Welsh sketches. Sandby took the
hint, and applying himself to the task with his wonted intelligence
and zeal, not only acquired great practical skill in the new art, but
brought the art itself to a much higher state of perfection.
The immediate result of his labour was the production of the first
1 A broad distinction between an aquatint and a mezzotint plate (apart from the methods
of producing them) is that, in the first, the roughening takes the form of a net-work of
minute furrows lying entirely belmu the original surface, while the second is covered with a
multitude of little points scratched up and projecting like very fine bristles above that surface.
2 Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.
I
CH. II SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 29
of four1 sets, containing twelve plates each, of views in Wales, drawn
and engraved by his own hand.2 The title-page of this series is
itself a beautiful specimen of aquatinta as applied to ornamental
design. Within an elegant Greek border, the following words appear
in white letters upon a rich dark ground : 'XII Views in Aquatinta
from Drawings taken on the spot in South Wales, Dedicated to the
Honourable Charles Greville and Joseph Banks Esquire by their ever
grateful and obliged servant Paul Sandby R.A. MDCCLXXV. N° I.'
Two of these plates bear the above date, and one, of ' South Gate,
Cardiff Castle,' is inscribed ' P. Sandby, 1774.' This may possibly
be the earliest English aquatint.3 Another series of twelve plates,
mostly dated ' Sep. 1776,' have their subjects in North Wales ; and
a third has the date ' Sep. 1777 ' on the separate plates, although the
first of them which has a title has the inscription 'XII Views in
Wales 1776,' on the back of a cart.
In these Welsh views, more particularly those of the earlier dates,
the engraver, while availing himself of the aquatint or resin ground
fo: his broad shadows and much of the detail, has given additional
depth and spirit by a free use of the point, and employed other
devices to heighten the effect. In subsequent plates he trusted more
to the even tones of the aquatint.
Architectural antiquities were not the only subjects that Sandby
sketched in Wales. Some of the views belong (to use the nomencla-
ture of Turner 4) to the categories of ' mountainous ' and ' pastoral '
landscape. These suffice to show how much too low a place in the
history of art is given to Sandby by those who say that his landscapes
did not get beyond mere topography.5 Besides effective composition
and graceful drawing, there is a natural freshness in the rural scenes,
and trees and foliage are depicted with truth and beauty rarely
equalled by more modern artists.6 There is a view of ' Llanberris
Lake, Castle Dol Badern and the Great Mountain Snowden,' which
1 Only three sets are in the British Museum Print Room ; and the dates on the plates
seem to show that, as bound, the second and third should be transposed to give the true
sequence.
2 One, of the Episcopal Palace of St. David's, is inscribed ' L. Wynn Del'.'
3 In the exhibition of the Society of Artists, 1774, there were a number of prints 'in
imitation of washed drawings,' engraved by F. Vispre, F.S.A. after Zucchi and others, and
executed in the same manner.
4 In the Liber Studiorum. 5 See Redgrave's Dictionary.
' See 'Chepstow Castle,' and ' Denufawr Castle,' numbered II1I and XI in the last-
mentioned series.
30 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I;K. I
conveys a due sense of magnitude, and may profitably be compared
with Buck's feeble attempt above mentioned at the same subject, on
the one hand ; and, on the other, with Turner's poetical rendering of
it in his ' England and Wales.' In these aquatints of Sandby's there
may perhaps be recognised an early foreshadowing of Turner's great
work the ' Liber Studiorum,' the plates of which are nearly of a size
with Sandby's Welsh views, and for the first of which the aquatint
process was actually employed.1
To the year 1776, if the dates on the prints are to be trusted,
belongs a set of large aquatints of Warwick Castle, published by
Boydell, and dedicated by Paul Sandby to the ' Right Hon. Geo.
Greville, Earl of Warwick;' and to that and the following year a series
of subjects at Windsor. Like the Welsh views, they were published by
Sandby at St. George's Row. On the first, dated Sept. 1st, 1776, is a
dedication to the Duke of Montagu. Among them, two views of the
Terrace are enlivened with groups of figures of much individual
character and humour. Another, representing the Castle from the
Lower Court on the fifth of November, with bonfires, and a rocket
going up, combines a Rembrandtesque richness in the effects of light
with a Hogarthian clement of humour in the crowd of revellers.
The living incidents employed by Sandby in the treatment of his
subjects may often be used as a distinctive test for the classification
of the subjects themselves. Thus, in picturesque compositions which
do not seek to portray a particular place, they are but landscape
figures of the established old-master type, with cattle and the like,
and no individual character. But, when local facts and objects have
to be rendered, he gives us the people of his day, as they lived, and
becomes their true historian. This was the case in his Windsor
views ; and a few years afterwards he recorded, in the same graphic
way, a feature of the time so vividly that we seem, in looking at
his work, to live with him a hundred years ago. In some large
prints, dated 1781, &c., he depicts the soldiers' camps in Hyde Park,
St. James's Park, the Museum Garden, and on Blackhcath, Coxheath,
and Warley Common, which were formed in 1780, the year of the
Lord George Gordon riots. The original drawings of some, if not all,
of these encampment scenes are in the Queen's Collection.
Sandby also worked from drawings by other hands, generally of
1 See Rawlinson's Turner's Lilvr Studiorum, and Pye and Roget's Notes on Turner's
Liber Studiorum.
CH. ll SANDBY AND THE RISE OF EXHIBITIONS 3!
foreign subjects ; though he did not himself travel abroad. There
are mentioned twenty-seven views (engraved by him after P. S.
Grignon and others) in North America and the West Indies, obi. folio,
1768, and 4to, 1781. Some folio views in New Jersey ' painted and
engraved ' by Paul Sandby from sketches on the spot by Governor
Pownall, must have been executed before 1769, as the letters R.A.
are not affixed to Sandby's name. He also executed in aquatint
a series of large plates of classical antiquities in Greece and Asia
Minor, after stained drawings made, between 1763 and 1766, by
William Pars, A.R.A. (born 1742, died 1782), who was sent out by the
Dilettanti Society to accompany Dr. Chandler and Mr. Revett as
draftsman. The dates of execution of some are 1777 and 1779, and
of publication 1779 and 1780. He also engraved, on a large scale,
architectural views in South Italy after Fabris, and Clerisseau,1 some
of which, dated 1777-8, are published by himself, and some in
conjunction with A. Robertson. Bryan mentions also ' a series of
prints exhibiting the sports of the Carnival at Rome from drawings
by David Allan ; 2 and the designs for Allan Ramsay's " Gentle
Shepherd," by the same artist.'
Some large views of Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, and W'orcester, bear-
ing date I Nov. 1778, also show Paul Sandby's skill as an engraver
in another style.
It is important to distinguish those of the above-mentioned plates
which he executed himself from his own designs, from certain prints
which were engraved after Sandby's drawings by other hands. The
former are, throughout, original works representing the artist as a
' painter-engraver ' (peintre-graveur), and they give a much higher and
more just impression of his power than the latter. When he and
another have engraved from the same drawing of his, the contrast is
sufficiently striking.
A series of 1 50 small prints, known as ' Sandby's Views,' must
nevertheless be noticed as one of the landmarks in the history of that
kind of local illustration which gave their chief employment to the
earlier water-colour draftsmen. They will have to be dealt with in a
fresh chapter.
1 Charles Louis Clerisseau, born 1722, died 1820 ; a French artist who drew in
water-colours, and assisted Robert Adam in illustrating the Kuins of Spalatro, published
in 1764.
1 David Allan (born 1744, died 1796) was one of the early water-colour painters of
figure subjects.
32 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK.
CHAPTER III
GENTLEMEN'S SEATS — ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY
Wedgwood's Russian service —An impetus to topographic art — Kearsley's ' Copper Plate
Magazine ' — E. Rooker — M. A. Rooker — ' Virtuosi's Museum ' — ' Oxford Almanack '—
Watts's, Milton's, and Angus's ' seats'— Advance in line-engraving— Woollett — Byrne —
Hearne — Middiman — Byrne's 'Antiquities' — Rooker and Hearne compared - Archi-
tectural draftsmen— The Mallons— Carter — Wheatley — Marlow.
THE last quarter of the eighteenth century was the period of a re-
markable revival in the taste for topography, which manifested itself
in a constant succession of published works, containing views of
objects of interest in the British Isles. The fashion seems to have
had its rise in the following series of events.
In or shortly before the year 1773, the Empress Catherine of
Russia made a proposal to Messrs. Wedgwood and Bentley, the great
Staffordshire potters, ' for the manufacture of a vast cream-ware
service, for every purpose of the table ; ' and directed that on every
one of the numerous pieces of which it should be composed there
should be enamelled a different view representing ' British scenery.'
It was a prodigious task, extending far beyond the usual limits of
fictile or decorative art. But Wedgwood and his partner were men
of great energy, and proved themselves equal to the occasion. At
first they staggered a little at the proposal. . There was no full recogni-
tion as yet of the ' beauties ' of England and Wales ; and the materials
for such a work had to be sought for far and wide. Bentley proposed
to despatch draftsmen at once all over the kingdom to take views —
' real views and real buildings.' Wedgwood, estimating the required
number at two thousand, declared that ' all the gardens in England
would scarcely furnish subjects sufficient ; ' and, moreover, that to copy
pictures and do their work tolerably would take no less than two or
three years. He was ' perswaded ' that there were ' not enough Gothique
Buildings in Great Britain ' for their purpose. The partners, however,
set zealously to work. Besides sending persons about with a camera
CH. in GENTLEMEN'S SEATS -ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 33
obscura, they ransacked the print-shops, and made every inquiry they
could think of for ' the most embelished views, the most beautiful Land-
skips, with Gothique Ruins, Grecian Temples, and the most Elegant
Buildings ' which our country could furnish. From these sources they
eventually succeeded in obtaining a sufficient variety of subjects to
execute the order, and painted on the different articles 1,282 views,
no two of which were alike. They were executed in monochrome,
' in enamel of a delicate black, which permits a shading and finish.'
The service when complete was exhibited for a month in June and
July, 1/74, before going to Russia, at the manufacturers' new show-
rooms in Greek Street, Soho, and became a great source of attraction
in the London world. The catalogue described it as, ' A Complete
set of Porcelain or Queen's ware, ornamented with different views of
the ruins, country-houses, parks, gardens, and picturesque landscapes
of Great Britain ; ' and a short descriptive preface states that ' the
principal subjects are ruins, remarkable edifices, parks, gardens, and
other natural objects which adorn Great Britain, and which merit the
attention of all travellers ; ' and further, that ' the landscapes depict
modern as well as ancient buildings — every taste studied — natural
scenes as well as interiors.'
The exhibition of this Russian service was an epoch in the history
of British topographic art. The production, or reproduction, of the
large number of views, thus found to be gratifying to an elegant
taste of society, seems to have acted as a fresh impetus to that class
of drawing, and also to have directed the course of the ensuing
flood of activity into a particular channel, in which it long remained.
Some of the measures which had been taken by the Staffordshire
potters in the accomplishment of their task throw a light upon the
state of patronage in their day. The views on the Empress's tea-
cups, &c., had been partly copied from existing pictures and
prints, and partly from new drawings made for the manufacturers
from the objects themselves. In their choice of the latter as subjects
of representation Wedgwood had had a practical eye to business,
and showed himself keenly alive to the tastes and requirements of
customers at home. His first thought of picturesque material was,
as we have seen, confined within garden walls and park palings ; and
the only drawings we hear of as ordered by the firm were of the
houses and p\t xsure-grounds of the wealthy. Wedgwood had written
from Etruria to his partner in London for a camera to ' take to the
I)
34 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
neighbouring gentlemen's seats." ' I find it will be in my power,' he
says, 'to pay some acceptable compliments in that way.' This policy
was successful. The county families of Stafford were ' highly pleased '
with their priority. ' From what I perceive in the little we have
done,' he continues, ' I could make it well worth my while to pursue
the same plan all over the kingdom.' But he has a fear of making
enemies of gentlemen who might think themselves neglected, either
by the omission of the seat of one 'when his neighbour's was
taken, or by putting it upon a small piece, or not flattering it suffi-
ciently.' '
The wary manufacturer had rightly gauged the popular estimate
of ' British scenery,' for henceforth views of country mansions formed
the staple of its graphic illustration. The kind of interest which
prevailed in the time of Kip and Badcslade appears to have
revived. Habitations of the nobility and gentry again engaged the
pencil of the topographic draftsman. In more modern times the
idea has still been cherished that mansions of the rich are what
constitute the essential charm of rural scenery. Who can forget the
typical Yorkshire servant of Mr. Kinglake's travelling party, 'who
rode doggedly on ' from Belgrade to Stambool ' in his pantry jacket,
looking out for gentlemen's seats ' ? 2 Views of towns, ruins, and
country mansions again became the subjects which the draftsman
had to depict, together with such so-called landscape as had been
arranged by professors of gardening. Rural scenery was as yet of
but small account.
It seems to have been in 1774, the year of the exhibition of
Wedgwood's Russian service, that a series of prints began to be
published by G. Kearsley, of 46 Fleet Street, in quarto, with the
name, The Copper Plate Magazine, or a Monthly Treasure for the
Admirers of the Imitative Arts. Each number was to contain 'A
Portrait of some celebrated Personage, some interesting Historical
Subject, or some curious Perspective View — Executed by the most
capital Artists of Great Britain, and calculated to enrich the cabinets
of the curious, or to ornament the apartments of persons of Real
Taste.' So said the prospectus. This work was continued in monthly
1 The above facts are related in the Life ofjosiah Wedgwood by the late Miss Meteyard,
to whose kindness the present writer is indebted for the above extracts from a manuscript
copy of the catalogue of the Russian service.
1 Eiithcn, p. 23.
CH. in GENTLEMEN'S SEATS— ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 35
numbers for three years and a half, and when complete it contained
forty-two portraits, forty-two history pieces, and forty-two landscapes.
The landscapes, with which alone we are concerned, were ' select
views in England and Wales," almost entirely from drawings by Paul
Sandby.
The engraving of the first plates was the work of the last year in
the life of an old friend and fellow-labourer of Sandby's, one Edivard
Rooker. They had etched together (after J. Collins) a set of illus-
trations to Tasso's Jerusalem, and Rooker had engraved some large
views in London after Paul and Thomas Sandby respectively.1 'Ned
Rooker ' had a versatile talent. Besides being one of the most
eminent engravers, he was reckoned the best harlequin of his time.
He was now upwards of sixty, and did not live to engrave more
than three plates2 for the new magazine. These were published
respectively on the 1st of October, November, and December, 1774.
The last he did not live to see brought out, for he had died on
the 22nd of November. The next print, representing ' Wynn Stay,
the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Bart.,' which appeared in the
number for New Year's Day, has upon it the name ' M. A. Rooker,'
and was accompanied by the following announcement : —
' It is with the utmost concern that we acquaint our encouragers
of the death of Mr. Edward Rooker, whose loss we deplore not only
as an artist, but as a man. His demise is a public calamity, and is
universally lamented. To console us, however, in some degree, we are
convinced by the perspective view annexed, that genius and taste is,
in some instances, hereditary ; and that Mr. Rooker junior inherits
all those eminent abilities as an artist, which were so justly and uni-
versally attributed to his father."
1 The writer (before quoted) on the ' British School of Engraving ' in the Library of
the Fine Arts, iii. 379, &c. (1832) says of E. Rooker: 'To his architectural subjects he
gave a richness and freedom that have never been surpassed ; ' and of the illustrations to
Tasso, which he cites as the finest examples of that engraver's work : ' In the boldest and
freest style, not excepting the works of Piazzetta, whose manner, or rather force, they seem
to imitate, yet possess more variety in the display of foliage, trunks of trees, and other materials
of landscape scenery.' A large interior of St. Paul's Cathedral, ornamented as intended by
Wren (after John Gwynn, R.A., with figures by Samuel Wale, R.A.), published in 1752, is
by some considered his masterpiece. There are also plates by him in Chambers's Civil
Architecture, Stuart's Athens, and Adam's Spalatro ; he engraved many of the headings of
the Oxford Almanack, and etched four Italian subjects after Wilson. Graves enumerates
eleven works exhibited by him at the Society of Artists between 1760 and 1768.
2 ' Wakefield Lodge in Whitlebury Forest,' probably from a drawing of Sandby's exhibite I
in 1767, ' Strawberry Hill,' and ' Datclvjt Bridge.'
L) 2
36 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK I
The son, whose accession to the family burin was thus proclaimed,
was already known as a draftsman as well as an engraver. He was
now more than thirty. His father had instructed him in the use of the
graver, and afterwards placed him with his friend Sandby, to be taught
to draw and paint landscapes. He proved a worthy successor and a
worthy pupil in his two crafts, and now holds rank with Sandby as
one of the best practitioners in the early style of water-colour
drawing. He is generally known as 'MICHAEL ANGELO' ROOKER,
but his baptismal name was ' Michael ' only. 'Angelo' was a jocular
addition, originally made by Paul Sandby, and afterwards adopted
by his pupil. In a holograph will he names himself ' Michael Rooker,
commonly called Michael Angelo Rooker.' ' He had exhibited
'stained drawings 'as far back as 1765, as 'Mr. Rooker Junior,' at
the Spring Gardens gallery. In 1768 we find him exhibiting a print
there, of the ' Villa Adriana ' after Wilson, under his own name,
with a separate address 'at Mr. Smith's, Long Acre," while his
father resides in ' Queen's Court, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's
Inn Fields.' In 1769 he was admitted a student of the Royal
Academy, and in the following year elected an Associate. In
1772 he exhibited a painting of Temple Bar which gained him
much credit ; and in the same year an edition of Sterne's works
was published with some illustrations by him. His chief works
iii water-colour were of later date. They will be referred to more
particularly in the sequel. At present we are dealing with him
only as one of the engravers of Sandby's views. From 1775 to
1777 most of the landscapes in Kearsley's serial are the work of his
graver.2
The ' Copper Plate Magazine,' in its original comprehensive form,
then came to an end. No more ' portraits ' or ' history pieces ' were en-
graved. The topographical landscapes, however, seem to have been
in greater demand ; for a fresh issue was commenced under a new
name, of monthly numbers, each containing three plates of Sandby's
views. The title was now The Virtuosi's Museum, containing Select
Views in England, Scotland, and Ireland ; Drawn by P. Sandby, R.A.,
London. Printed for G. Kearsley at No. 46, near Serjeants' Inn,
Fleet Street, 1778.' The form is long quarto, with letterpress to
each plate, and the engraved part of the plate measures 5| by 7^
inches. A didactic preface, after setting forth the superiority of
1 Edwardu'a Anecdotes. - Some arc by \Yalts ; a few by B. Green.
CH. ill GENTLEMEN'S SEATS-ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 37
intellectual delight over sensual pleasure, proceeds in the following
words : —
'That such is the laudable design of the present undertaking no
one can entertain a doubt who reflects that the student, as well as
the admirer of the ingenious art of sculpture,1 will be supplied with
elegant engravings from the designs of one of the first artists of this
kingdom at the very moderate price of one shilling for each plate,
instead of the usual demand of from 2s. 6d. to $s. made for landscapes
of inferior merit.
' What a cheap and rational amusement then will these Gentlemen
possess monthly, for the same consideration that is given for one
night's admittance to the pit of a theatre! and in the course of a year,
what a beautiful addition will be made to the furniture of their apart-
ments, for less than the value of a masquerade ticket !
' It would be superfluous to say more of the design if the execu-
tion is answerable, which we flatter ourselves cannot fail from the
great reputation of the Artists engaged ; we shall want no policy of
insurance, for in the public favour we shall find an ample reward for
our labours. It remains only to account for the choice of our subjects,
and in this we follow an illustrious example. The renowned Empress
of Russia, the magnificent patroness of every useful undertaking
calculated to improve the taste and polish the manners of her subjects,
without corrupting their hearts, has paid the highest compliment to
the genius and taste of this country ; by procuring, at an immense
expence, views of all the noblemen and gentlemen's seats, and of every
delightful spot throughout the kingdom, drawn on the spot, and
painted upon setts of china dishes and plates. If these views appear
so enchanting in the eyes of this great princess, surely it must afford
the highest satisfaction to Britons themselves to have in their posses-
sion complete representations of them on a better plan for preserva-
tion and on much easier terms.'
' The Virtuosi's Museum ' continued to be published for three
years, when thirty-six monthly numbers dated from i February, 1778,
to i January, 1781, had appeared, containing in the whole 108 plates
in the line manner, uniform with those of the 'Copper Plate Magazine.'
Many of the subjects which Sandby himself had engraved much better
in aquatint on a larger scale, including seme of the encampment scenes,
1 The word ' sculpture ' for engraving, employed in that sense in the days of Evelyn's
Sculptura, had not yet fallen into disuse.
38 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
are here repeated.1 In this new series, Rooker had a much smaller
share than before. His name only appears as one, though perhaps
the best, among twenty engravers,2 who were employed upon the plates.
He was now engaged in other work. He had followed his father
as engraver for the ' Oxford Almanack,' the headings of which, exe-
cuted by him for a succession of years, after his own designs, came to
be highly esteemed. Like his father, too, he was connected with the
stage, though he does not appear to have trod the boards as an actor.
He worked with his hands and head, not with his feet, and was for
several years employed as principal scene-painter to the Haymarket
Theatre, under Colman's management. In the playbills of the day he
was ' Signor Rookerini.'
While Sandby's views were thus in course of publication, another
series of a similar kind were started by the William Watts above
mentioned as one of his engravers. Watts, like ' Michael Angelo,'
had been a pupil both of Edward Rooker and of Paul Sandby, but
is known chiefly as an engraver. His work is entitled : The Seats of
the Nobility and Gentry ; ' in a Collection of the most interesting and
Picturesque Views, Engraved by W. Watts. — From Drawings by the
most Eminent Artists. — With descriptions to each view. — Published by
W. Watts, Kemp's Row, Chelsea. January 1st, 1779.' There are eighty
plates, the subjects of which measure about 5 by 7| inches. This
series was continued till about 1786, when Watts went abroad. At
later dates he brought out other topographical works.3 He afterwards
became blind, but lived till comparatively modern times, and died at
Cobham in Surrey in December, 1851, in his hundredth year. Red-
grave, who gives us these facts, adds that he was ' a good French and
Italian scholar, and a well-read man.'
Next in date is A Collection of Select Views from the Different
Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdom of Ireland,
1 The two series of views, 42 in the Copper Plate Magazine, and 1 08 in the Virtuosi's
Museum, afterwards became the property of Boydell, and were rearranged and republished
by him in two volumes, dated 1782, 1783, with the title ' A Collection of 150 Select Views
in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, drawn by Paul Sandby, R.A.' In this edition
the pages are upright instead of oblong, and the title-pages and descriptive letterpress are
in English and French. Vol. I contains 73 English, and vol. 2 contains 17 Welsh,
27 Scotch, and 33 Irish views.
2 The others were W. Watts, Walker, Ryder or Rider, T. Cooke, P. Mazell, D.
Lespinier, J. Morris, F. Chesham, Wm. Ellis, C. Duponchel, Jas. Fittler, E. Scott, W.
Angus, J. Roberts, T. Woodyer, T. Medland, T. Collyer, T. Milton, and I. Scott.
3 Twelve Views of Bath, 1791 ; Select Vieios in London, 1800; Sixty views for Sir R.
Ainslie's Turkey and Palestine, 1801-1805.
CH. Ill GENTLEMEN'S SEATS-ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 39
' Engraved by Thomas Milton, from original drawings by the best
masters.' It contains twenty-four plates, in oblong 4to, all engraved
by Milton. The plates are not all dated, but the dates on those
which are, extend from 1785 to 1793. Pye ' says that the work was
commenced in 1783. Milton was a landscape engraver of much
repute. A considerable proportion of these views are pure landscape
subjects, not even containing a house in sight.
In an English series which followed, and also known by the
name of their engraver, William Angus, the views are strictly con-
fined to representations of houses, standing in their parks and ground*
They were entitled : The Seats of tlie Nobility and Gentry in Great
Britain and Wales, ' in a collection of Select Views : — Engraved by
W. Angus, from Pictures and Drawings by the most eminent artists,
with descriptions of each view. — Published by W. Angus, Gwynne's
Buildings, Islington. — February i, 1787.' The dates on the platesare
from February, 1787, to September I, 1797.
While topographers were thus re-establishing the old connection
between drawing and engraving, the latter art had been making
important advances. A race of line engravers was springing up in
this country, whose talent had been specially cultivated with a view
to the interpretation of landscape. The father of their school was
William Woollett. The life's work of that distinguished original
artist and kind, good man was now rapidly drawing to a close. He
died on the 23rd of May, 1785, at the too early age of fifty, from the
effects of an accident. Wooflett himself had, in some of his first
plates, employed his burin in the service of topography, upon the
class of subjects which we have seen to be so popular — gentlemen's
seats, or their surroundings ; and he also at a later period engraved
some continental views.2 But his triumphs as a landscape engraver
were in the exquisite translations which he made from pictures of
a more ' onventional kind, and from the classic works of Richard
Wilson, R.A. It was reserved for some of Woollett's immediate
followers, to employ his more refined manner of engraving in aid of
1 Patronage of British Art, 246.
2 Some views in the garden of Sir Francis Dashwood at West Wycombe, engraved by
him after drawings by William Hannan, were published in 1757 ; and there are plates, dated
1760, of Foot's Cray Place and Coombank. Two views in Waller's garden at ' Hall-Barn,
Beckonsfield,' must be of the same period. He also engraved, in 1773-4, some views in
Switzerland and elsewhere after drawings by Win. Pars, A.R.A., and in 1779, the
Hermitage at Warkworth, after Ilearne.
40 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. i
the topographic draftsmen, Sandby's successors, who were the parents
of the actual founders of our water-colour school.
Three of these engravers demand special notice in connection with
our subject, namely William Byrne, Thomas Hearne, and Samuel
Middiman. Their names are associated with two scries of topo-
graphic prints which, appearing contemporaneously with those last
mentioned, are entitled to much higher rank than theirs as works of
art. In the year 1780, when Sandby, then fifty-one, sketched the
soldiers in the parks, and the no-popery mob burnt Newgate, and the
Academy exhibition went to Somerset House from its old quarters in
Pall Mall, they were all in the prime of life. Byrne was thirty-seven,
Hearne thirty-six, Middiman thirty. Hearne had been a pupil of
Woollett's. Byrne, though much of his art was original, or inspired
by Woollett,1 had studied, first under an uncle, and then abroad
under Aliamet and Wille. Like Woollett, he engraved large plates
after Claude, Both, Zuccarelli, Vernet, and, last not least, Richard
Wilson. Middiman is stated in Stanley's ' Bryan ' to have studied
under Woollett and Bartolozzi. Redgrave calls him a pupil of
Byrne's. However that may be, he was an excellent line engraver,
particularly noted for his skill in using the etching point.
THOMAS HEARNF, although he served a six years' apprenticeship to
Woollett, and worked on many of his plates, did not go on practising
as an engraver, but was led by good fortune to devote his talent to
topographical drawing. Coming to London as a boy, from his native
village in Wiltshire, to learn a trade, he had shown his aptness as well
as his real liking, by gaining, in 1763, a premium at the Society of
Arts: and when the term of his indentures expired, he, in 1771,
embarked for the Leeward Islands, with their new governor Sir Ralph
Payne, afterwards Lord Lavington, to draw for him their characteristic
features. After more than five years occupied in this undertaking,
three and a half of which were spent in the West Indies, he determined
to devote himself to making topographic drawings, and leave in other
competent hands the task of engraving them on copper. In 1777
Byrne and he combined their forces for the production of a work
on British topography, which, while it revived a branch of that study
that had been somewhat in abeyance, effected a distinct advance of
1 Redgrave says 'he studied from nature and formed his own style.' The writer of the
' British School of Engraving ' in the Library of the Fine Arts (iii. 379 &c.) speaks of him
*s one of the chief artists who followed that of Woollett.
CH. in GENTLEMEN'S SEATS— ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 41
style in both their departments of art. While Sandby and others,
in their views of residences of the then existing generation, were
recording the life of their own time present, Hearne set himself to
depict the contemporary aspect of relics of the past. He travelled
over England and Scotland in search of mediaeval antiquities, and
in 1781 had executed fifty-two drawings,1 of which he made an
exhibition at the rooms in Spring Gardens. At the same time,
William Byrne, who like himself was a student of archaeology, was,
with the assistance of Samuel Middiman and one or two other
skilful artists, busily engaged in engraving them on copper. The
series of plates thus commenced extended over a long course of years.
When complete, they were collected in two oblong folio volumes,
entitled Antiquities of Great Britain, ' Illustrated in Views of Monas-
teries, Castles, and Churches, now existing, Engraved by W. Byrne,
F.S.A. from Drawings made by Thomas Hearne, F.S.A. with descrip-
tions in English and French. London, Printed for T. Cadell and
W. Davies, Strand, 1807.' The size of the subjects is 10 by "j\ inches.
To the contemporary display of the talent of the two eminent
draftsmen, Michael Rooker and Thomas Hearne, whose rise and
professional progress has been sketched in the foregoing pages, the
origin of British water-colour painting has sometimes been attributed.
It would perhaps be more correct to say that in their works we see
the culminating point of the old topographic school, which was to be
superseded by a more complete rendering of landscape in the next
generation.
In the careers of Rooker and Hearne there was much in common,
as well as in the technical practice of their joint art. At the same
time, there are marked points of distinction. They were very nearly
of an age, Rooker having been born in 1743, and Hearne in the
following year. Both began, as we have seen, as landscape engravers.
Both attained to more than common skill in the use of the burin, but
cast it aside in after years for the more congenial freedom of the pencil.
Both adopted the ' stained ' or ' tinted ' manner of the topographers
of their time. But their styles of art bear witness to a difference of
perceptive feeling ; the work of their hand seeming to accord with
1 Redgrave {Diet, of the English School), who says they 'are dated from 1777 to 1781,
the latter drawings exhibiting more artistic feeling.' The drawings in the engraved series of
Byrne's Antiquities include others of earlier and later dates ; one (of ' Castle Acre Priory ')
being as early as 1771, and some being as late as 1788 ; the dates of publication of the plates
S'nR from 1778 to 1806.
42 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
their personal disposition. While both were reputed men of great
integrity, Rooker's manners are said to have been ' somewhat rough,' '
and Hearne's ' agreeable, gentlemanly and modest.' *
Rooker's drawing is decided and vigorous. His colour, not inhar-
monious as a whole, is sometimes careful in textural detail ; but often
limited to a merely distinctive indication of general hues of certain
objects, the grounding grey of others being left untinted. ' He had,'
says Pyne,3 'an excellent eye for the picturesque. Many of his
representations of ancient remains are drawn with truth and charac-
teristic detail. . . The views of the colleges on the Oxford Almanack
which were drawn and engraved by this artist,' adds the same critic,
' alone would remain sufficient testimony of his abilities.' His ' groups
of figures ' too are ' well drawn and well introduced.' 4 But his views
suggest little beyond what they actually depict. They are devoid of
poetry, and, in sense of beauty of atmospheric gradations, are far
inferior to the works of his confrere.
To Hearne the critics have justly assigned the higher place.
' Following Sandby and Rooker, and next in succession to them,' he is
held by Redgrave 5 to have ' greatly advanced the new art of water-
colours. Though weak in colour, his truth and correctness of drawing,
his tasteful finish and composition, added a new charm to the art.
He used the pen, but less obtrusively than his predecessors, sometimes
so tenderly in tint that, while adding greatly to the minute beauty of
his architectural forms, it gives a most delicate sharpness and comple-
tion.' Pilkington 6 says of Hearne's works that 'though not remark-
ably numerous, they are eminently distinguished for some of the best
qualities of the art. He seldom attempted the bolder effects of
nature ; but for truth, a chaste and mild tone of colouring, and an
admirable judgment in the arrangement .of the whole, they have
seldom been surpassed ; and it is not too much to say, that he was
the father of all that is good in that species of art, namely, landscape
in water-colours, which has so widely and conspicuously diffused itself,
and is peculiar to this country.' He ' substituted for Indian ink in
the shadows a fine grey tint, opposing a pleasing warm hue to it, and
by a judicious employment of the two produced great harmony.'7
1 Edwards's Anecdotes, 264. 2 Pilkington's Dictionary,
* Somerset House Gazette, i. 65. * Redgrave's Descriptive Catalogue, 13.
5 Dictionary of the English School. ' General Dictionary of Painters.
7 MS. Notes by I'anworth.
CH. Ill GENTLEMEN'S SEATS— ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 43
Graves finds that between the years 1765 and 1806 he exhibited
seventy-eight works ; forty-two at the Incorporated Society of Artists,
twelve at the Free Society, and twenty-four at the Royal Academy.
Drawings by him were engraved in other works besides the
' Antiquities,' and in separate prints. Three of ' Watts's Seats ' are
from his designs. His subjects are generally ruins of Gothic architec-
ture, but there are at the British Museum some views of Greek temples
in Sicily, executed by him in conjunction with Mr. Charles Gore.
Contrasting somewhat with the artists just mentioned, but be-
longing to the same topographic group, and working with the same
materials and method, were a set of draftsmen who more strictly repre-
sent the architectural element in the illustration of their time. Less
picturesque in their choice of subjects than Rooker and Hearne, and
still more prosaic than the former, they perhaps were better fitted, by
a precise manner and neat manipulation, for the particular kind of
work which they undertook. The most conspicuous among these
were Thomas Malton and John Carter, both born in 1748, and
therefore four years younger than Hearne. The former was em-
ployed to portray the modern buildings of the period, the smoothness
of dressed stone, the symmetry of Italian facades. The latter made
a faithful record of the features of our ancient edifices. But it was
strictly from an architect's point of view. He did not seek to convey
the venerable aspect of their walls as affected by time and natural
decay. In his small views of cathedrals, in Indian ink slightly tinted,
there is some tender sense of atmosphere. But his works scarcely
come within the category of Landscape.
In 1780, John Carter began to make strictly architectural drawings
for the Society of Antiquaries, and he was so employed to the end of
the century. Many of these, beautifully executed, of sectional and
other views of English cathedrals (some of them still unengraved), are
in the possession of the society. Carter is best known by his various
engraved works. He was himself a writer on Gothic Architecture.
He is also said to have painted the scenery of two operas which he
composed for the stage.
Thomas Malton, usually called ' the younger,' was the son of
Thomas, or Thomas A. Malton,1 a draftsman of the same class, born
in 1726, whose age was therefore intermediate between those of the
1 Redgrave's Dictionary. In Stanley's Bryan these two Maltons are combined in one
personality.
44 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RK. I
two Sandbys. The father is said to have gone to Dublin in or before
1769, after failing as a London upholsterer in the Strand ; and to have
lived poorly by teaching perspective. In 1775 he published, as Joshua
Kirby had done more than twenty years before, a Treatise on Per-
spective on the Principles of Dr. Taylor. Graves finds five works
exhibited by him at the Royal Academy between 1772 and 1785, and
Redgrave describes his drawings as being ' finished in Indian ink,
slightly tinted,' and tells us that after living again for some time in
London, he eventually died in Dublin in 1801.
Drawings by Thomas Malton the younger are found named in the
exhibition catalogues from an earlier to a later date than his father's,
namely from 1768 to 1803 : — two at the Free Society, and 128 at the
Royal Academy. He contributed five views to ' Watts's Seats ; ' and
there is one ' View near Bath ' by him in Middiman's series of landscape
prints. But there is usually nothing about his works that savours
of the country. He was essentially a drawer of modern streets, his
education in art having been more that of a practical architect than a
painter's. He was for three years in the office of Gandon, who erected
some of the principal buildings in Dublin. These he made the
subjects of large perspective drawings, tinted as usual upon a carefully
shaded Indian ink foundation. In 1780 we find him at Bath, drawing
the stately stone houses of that fashionable resort, and at a later date
he came to London, where he made a vast number of views, and
published them in a series of prints.1 Malton also, like so many of
the best draftsmen of his time, was employed as a scene-painter,
and attained to some success in that branch of art at Covent Garden
Theatre.
There was a third artist of the same surname, possibly another
son of old Thomas Malton, known as James Malton. He made and
published a series of Picturesque Views of the City of Dublin between
1791 and 1795, while the younger Thomas was illustrating in the
same way the cities of London and Westminster.
Thomas Malton's streets are well peopled, and enlivened with the
incidents of the daily life of his time. Within their limits, they con-
tinue the illustrative record of domestic history which Sandby had
been jotting down from an earlier date. The figures are, indeed, more
1 A Picturesque Tour through the Cities of London and Westminster, 2 vols. Svo, 1792.
He also published Picturesque Vinos in the City of OxforJ, 410, 1802. And he taught
Turner perspective.
CH. in GENTLEMEN'S SEATS— ARCHITECTURAL TOPOGRAPHY 45
conventional than Sandby's, though both these draftsmen are said to
have been assisted in this important element by the same artist,
one who claims further notice on his own account, namely Francis
Wheatley, R.A.
Wheatley, though in the main an oil-painter, practised much in
water-colours also ; and, in the washed or tinted manner of his day,
drew both figures and landscapes well. Many of his works are the
subjects of prints, the most widely known being that of the riots of '80,
engraved by James Heath. Wheatley's figures are too elegant to
have much individual character. He evidently did much more for
Malton than for Sandby. He was born in 1747, in London, and
learnt his art there, but painted portraits for some years in Dublin,
where he probably came to know the Maltons. As a painter of rustic
landscape, wherein his talent chiefly lay, he must be included among
a group of artists with whom the Maltons and their brother topo-
graphers had little in common.
Although William Marlow was another artist well known for his
views of public buildings, it was chiefly as a painter in oils. He also
studied in water-colours, and made drawings of Italian seaports, &c.
They were chiefly dependent on outline, and were crude in colour.
46 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. i
CHAPTER IV
PICTURESQUE TOPOGRAPHY
Middimnn's 'Views' — Natural scenery — Gainsborough — His influence — His love of trans-
parency—His camera — Wheatley in landscape— Barret, R.A. — Unfairly contrasted with
Wilson — His career — Sir George Beaumont's panorama.
ALTHOUGH we are approaching the time when water-colour art was
to emancipate itself from its old subserviency to engraving, it will still
be convenient to employ the chalcographic publications of the time as
a thread whereon to string our historic notes of the draftsmen whose
works they represent.
Distinguishable from the ' Virtuosi's Museum ' by their superiority
of execution, and both from that work and from Byrne's ' Antiquities '
by the nature of their subjects, are the series of fifty-three Select
Views in Great Britain ' engraved by 5. Middiman from Pictures
and Drawings by the most eminent Artists, with Descriptions,' which
were published by that engraver at 3 Grafton Street, Tottenham Court
Road, from 1783 till 1787. They also mark an epoch when land-
scape was beginning to free itself from the trammels of topography ;
or, to speak more correctly, when the lines along which the two arts
had been separately advancing had begun to converge.
The approach on the one side had been mainly the work of
Sandby, Rooker, and Hearne. That on the other was greatly, if
not entirely, due to Gainsborough. That thoroughly English artist,
though some of his landscapes may seem conventional in modern
eyes, was the first to tell his countrymen of the wealth of beauty that
lay wasting its sweetness in the rural lanes and woods and hedgerows
of their native land. Wilson might shed a halo of southern sunshine
over Welsh hills, and perch Olympian gods upon our northern cumuli.
Taverners might copy Poussin, and Smiths of Derby make free with
Claude. Even Gainsborough himself got something from the Dutch,
and conventionalized after his own fashion. But in his pictures we
have the foundation of a school of landscape which neither imports a
CH. iv PICTURESQUE TOPOGRAPHY 47
foreign element, nor contents itself with a mere recording of the look
and shape of individual objects. It makes the sensation of abstract
beauty, of form, of tone, and of colour, its leading motive in the
selection, but still more in the treatment, of its subject ; while it seeks
at the same time to convey as strong an impress as possible of the
character of the scenery it depicts. It was only in the succeeding
generation that these two principles came to be combined, in a form
of topography in which local objects, though furnishing the primary
motive, were subjected to an artistic treatment either poetic or merely
picturesque, which, by exalting the theme, constituted in itself the
work of art that charmed the spectator.1
Gainsborough himself, though he made studies in chalk and even
in water-colour, was essentially a painter in oils ; and it is merely in
his general influence on landscape art, as practised after his time by
water-colour draftsmen, that he demands notice here. He died in 1788
at the age of sixty-one. Had he belonged to the generation that
succeeded his, he must inevitably have excelled in water-colour paint-
ing. There is evidence that he had a singular appreciation of the
beauty of transparent colour. Had he lived to learn the fullness and
depth with which water-colours could be used, he would have hailed
the discovery with special delight. During the latter years of his life
he occupied himself with experiments in transparent painting, as a
means of representing luminous and atmospheric effects. Angelo,
in his own Reminiscences? mentions Gainsborough's admiration of some
transparent scenery during the carnival of Venice. The absorbing
fascination exercised upon him by Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon,
which represented nature in a similar way, is well known. It is said
that he was ' so possessed with the magical richness of transparencies
that he occasionally made studies, and lighting them from behind, from
these emulated their splendour in his pictures,' and that 'owing to this
practice some of his latest works are remarkable for violent contrasts
and wanting in that stillness and harmony which characterised his
earlier labours.'3 Impelled, itis believed, by the charm of Loutherbourg's
show, and further entranced by Jarvis's4 exhibition of stained glass, he
1 'Art I define as a whole, wherein a large element of beauty clothes and makes accept-
able a still larger element of truth.' (C. Coquelin on 'Acting and Actors,' Harper's
Magazine, May 1887.) The definition applies to graphic as well as to histrionic art.
2 Vol. i. p. 10. ' Somerset House Gazette, ii. 8.
4 The glass stainer who executed the west window of New College, Oxford, from Sir
Joshua UcynoUls's designs.
48 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
devised and constructed a small camera or peep-show of his own, in
which by means of slides painted by him on glass, and litup with candles
from behind, he was enabled to depict landscapes under various condi-
tions of light and air. In his latter years, he was in the habit of
sketching designs for this show-box exhibition, while intimate friends,
who called upon him in an evening stroll, sat by and sipped their tea.1
At the painter's death, he left the camera to his unmarried daughter,
from whom it was purchased by Dr. Monro.2
Among Middiman's views there is nothing by Gainsborough. But
some of the earliest and best are from drawings or pictures by his
brother Academicians Francis Wheatley and GEORGE BARRET. Barret
was a foundation member of the Academy in 1768. Wheatley was
not elected until 1791. Their views were taken, not from the haunts
of men, but from parts of the country where Nature had her sway
uncontrolled ; nearly all from the scenery of the Lakes. When the
series, originally published by Middiman, and then continued at
irregular intervals by the Boydells, was finally made up at the end of
i Si 2 to fifty-three views, the complete work was issued in one volume
with an advertisement claiming for the collection the merit of ' being
among the first to have created a taste for the sublime scenery of
Great Britain. The Lakes and Mountains of Westmoreland, Cumber-
land, and Lancashire, now the general resort of the Tourist and the
admiration of the Painter, were but little noticed at the time of the
Publication of the early Numbers, though representations of them at
present abound.' So runs the advertisement, the historic truth of
which there is no reason to doubt. ' Middiman's views ' mark a
new departure in British landscape art. They had fairly broken the
bounds of old-fashioned topography.
A classified list of the complete series of these views shows that
1 Somerset House Gazette, ubi supra.
2 Gainsborough's camera was shown in W. B. Cooke's exhibition of drawings at 9 Soho
Square in 1824, with some of the views. It remained in Dr. Monro's possession until his
death in 1833, after which, at the dispersal of his collection, it was sold by Christie, with ten
subjects, to Mr. Benoni White, the dealer, of Brownlow Street, Holborn. By him it was
bequeathed to Mr. G. W. Reid, late Keeper of Prints to the British Museum. It was for a
short time, in December 1881, to be seen at Mr. Hogarth's, the dealer's, in Mount Street.
It was again placed on view with twelve glass paintings, by Sir Coutts Lindsay, in his
' Grosvenor Gallery,' in the collection of Gainsborough's works in the winter of 1884 85 ;
but, not being lighted in the manner intended by the painter, it there failed to receive due
attention. One of the slide subjects was shortly afterwards etched by M. Brunei de Baines,
with the name 'Worcester, a Peep between Trees.' On 29 March, 1890, it waf sold at
Christie's, with the twelve landscapes, for 205 guineas. It is said that at a formei sale
they were bought in at I,2OO/.
en. iv PICTURESQUE TOPOGRAPHY 49
they contained fifteen ' Mountains &c.,' fourteen ' Rural Prospects,'
sixteen ' Lakes, Bays, &c.,' and eighteen ' Rivers, Cascades, &c.'
The eight views contributed by Wheatley give a fair sample of his
quality. They at least bear out the Messrs. Redgrave's ' estimate
that ' his forte lay in landscape with rustic figures, treated with taste,
but marked by an over-refined prettiness.'
George Barret was a more conspicuous artist. But he scarcely
seems to hold now his true place in the history of British art, owing
to comparisons habitually made, and justly so, with some of his greater
contemporaries, more especially with Wilson. Unfortunately for
Barret, it is in such comparisons that his name most frequently occurs
in the literature of art. We are accustomed to read that while poor
Wilson (an Academician too) was suffering in neglect, and looking
to posterity alone for the fame he deserved, and while people of rank
and fashion, who came to sit to Gainsborough, swept by, without
bestowing a glance on, his row of unsold landscapes, a misdirected
patronage extolled the genius of Barret, who made (and spent) his
thousands a year by practice in that branch of art.
No one in the present day would venture to place Barret in the
same rank, as a painter, with Wilson or Gainsborough. But his
influence on the art of his time must in some degree be measured by
his popularity while he lived. He is described as a man of genial
disposition, playful in manner, of high spirits, and a strong turn to wit
and humour. Pyne, who remembered him, says that he was not only
' warm-hearted and highly esteemed,' but ' an enthusiast in his art.'
No doubt he was indebted for much of his position and success to
the friendly offices of persons of distinction. Edmund Burke set him
to study the scenery of Lord Powerscourt's park near his native Dublin,
in which city he had been employed, as greater painters2 than he were
afterwards employed in London, in colouring prints. When Barret
came to London in I/62,3 Lord Dalkeith paid him i,5oo/. for three
pictures. In his latter days, when his health failed and he had spent even
more than he had earned, Burke again came to his relief and obtained
for him the well-paid and apparently sinecure post of Master Painter
to Greenwich Hospital. Besides being an original member of the
Royal Academy, he was one of the most active of its founders. No
doubt he was greatly overrated. But he was the fashionable landscape
painter of the day. His pictures gained premiums in Dublin and
' Century of 1'ainters, i. 440. " Turner and Girtin. ' Redgrave.
K
50 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
in London. Graves enumerates fifty-two works by Barret in the ex-
hibitions of the older societies and the Academy between 1764 and
1786. Even he drew gentlemen's seats. There are five such views
of his in Watts's series.
A continuous view of Cumberland Lake scenery, which he painted
on the walls of a large room at Norbury Park, then the residence of
the Rev. John Locke, was the talk of society. According to the
Messrs. Redgrave,1 it was in oil, but Pyne 2 says it was painted in body-
colours, ' or what is termed by the French, who excel in that process,
gwashf and accounts it ' among the best of the earliest efforts of the
English school of landscape.' The latter writer further informs us
that this wall decoration has been regarded as the precursor of the
cylindrical pictures which were in later years so long popular under
the name of ' the Panorama.' It is said that Sir George Beaumont,
on the suggestion thus afforded, actually built a small circular room
by way of experiment, from the centre of which the spectator's eye
could sweep the complete horizon of a Welsh view painted all round
him on the wall.
Barret's works are unequal, his earlier being heavier than his later
manner ; and some of his pictures are said to have suffered from
changes in the pigments he used. His 'stained drawings' are
scarcely of importance enough to entitle him to rank as one of the
founders of our water-colour school ; but he had an influence upon its
landscape art, not only as an early painter who devoted himself to the
representation of English scenery, feeling and portraying its richness
and the charm of its dewy verdure at spring-tide, but by the sound
training which he seems to have given to an artist of greater talent,
who inherited his name and was one of the first members of the
Water-Colour Society.
1 Century of Painters, i. 107-8. * Somerset House Gazette, ii. 46.
5'
CHAPTER V
TRAVELLING ARTISTS ; AND ALEXANDER COZENS
John Smith — William Pars — John Cleveley— John Webber — Francis Smith— William
Alexander — Influence of travellers on the Water-Colour School — Alexander Cozens — His
origin and marriage —Teaches amateurs at Bath —His method of composing landscapes —
Gainsborough and amateur sketchers — Cozens's published works.
ANOTHER artist, of a name so common as to be of itself a drawback
to distinction, appears as a contributor of designs for six of the earlier
plates to Middiman's ' Views.' This was John Smith, a man destined
to do more than either of the above to advance the art of water-
colour painting. The last of the plates after his designs is dated 25
May, 1785. He then set off for Italy with the Earl of Warwick; and
it was during the next ten years that he changed his old manner of
tinting his drawings for the more effective method of using colour
which was afterwards developed into the practice of the modern
school. More will be said of him by-and-by. In the mean time the
employment on which he was engaged demands our consideration.
While the scope of British topography had been widening, and
an increasing number of draftsmen had thus found employment for
their talent, a demand had arisen for artists of the same kind to
undertake the like task beyond the limits of the British Isles. With
the love of inquiry into times remote there had also come a thirst for
knowledge of distant places. Voyages of discovery were promoted
in the interests of science ; and a taste for travel, combining with the
dilettante spirit of art, had resulted in the exploring of classic sites and
in continental touring by persons of wealth and leisure. The records
of these various expeditions took the form of illustrated books, for
which the line engravers of the day reproduced many views made on
the spot by draftsmen employed for the purpose.
Hence arose this wider demand for workers in water-colour. The
same simple method of drawing which they had found suitable to
home views, proved equally available in foreign travel. For the rapid
52 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
and permanent record of local facts there has not even yet been
discovered a more handy and expressive style of sketching, than that
adopted by the old topographers Sandby and Rooker ; and it was
employed by the travelling artists who accompanied expeditions
round the world, or were taken out by noblemen on the ' grand tour '
of Europe. Some of these artists played an important part in the
formation of the school of landscape which afterwards became
identified with the old Water-Colour Society.
Hearne, as we have seen, had practised his pencil abroad, when
employed by the Governor of the Leeward Islands.
William Pars, A.R.A., known also as a portrait painter, who died
at forty in 1782, drew Greek ruins for the Dilettanti Society between
1763 and 1766, some of which were aquatinted by Sandby and some
engraved in line by Byrne ; and he also travelled on the Continent
with Lord Palmerston, and took views of Rome and among the
Tyrolese and Swiss Alps, some of the latter of which were engraved
by Woollett. He exhibited stained drawings at the Royal Academy,
where Graves ' finds twenty-seven of his works, besides thirteen at
the earlier societies' galleries, between 1760 and 1800. Ten of his views
were in Dr. Percy's collection, sold at Christie's on 22 April, 1890.
They were treated with an elegant sense of the picturesque, and his
tinted greys have an agreeable warmth of tone.
John Cleveley, a marine painter who learned water-colours from
Paul Sandby, accompanied Mr. Banks on his tour in Iceland in 1772,
and was draftsman to the voyage to the north seas undertaken in
1774 by Captain Phipps (afterwards Lord Mulgrave). He died in
1786 at about the same age as Pars.
John Webber, R.A., was born about seven years after Cleveley,
and survived him by about the same period. He went out as
draftsman with Captain Cook, illustrated that navigator's third and
last voyage, and depicted as an eye-witness the scene of his death,
in a print engraved by Bartolozzi and Byrne. Though weak both
in drawing and colour, some views which he etched and aquatinted
of the places he went to are said to have been very popular. He was
made a Royal Academician but two years before his death.
Julius Ccesar Ibbetson accompanied Colonel Cathcart's embassy to
China in 1788 as draftsman, but the ambassador dying on the voyage
the vessel returned.
1 Dittionary of Artists,
CH. v TRAVELLING ARTISTS ; AND ALEXANDER COZENS 53
There were other draftsmen who had been similarly employed.
Among them is mentioned one Francis Smith, who died in or about
1779, having made drawings in the East, in company with Lord
Baltimore. In succeeding generations, fresh groups of artists were
engaged in the same branch of the profession. Some of these will
demand more special notice in the sequel ; and although it belongs
to a rather later period, the name of William Alexander (born 1767,
died 1816), who accompanied Lord Macartney to China in 1792 as
draftsman, and illustrated Sir George Staunton's account of that
embassy, deserves special mention here. His figures were spirited,
and his topographic and architectural subjects were drawn with
refined taste.1
These draftsmen are in fact the artistic ancestry of the special
correspondents of illustrated journals of our own day. Of them may
be repeated what has been already said of the earlier topographers,
that they are better entitled to the name of ' historical painters ' than
are those (Academic, Pre-Raphaelite, or whatever else they may be)
who assume it on the strength of sitting in a studio and copying paid
models, dressed up to represent persons who may never even have
existed at all ; and events which, after all the artist's pains in his
endeavour to be realistic, had (we may be sure) a different aspect
when they actually occurred. ' Les peintres soi-disant de 1'histoire ne
peignent pas mieux 1'histoire que la fable.' 2
Whether, as a rule, the artists who thus travelled in foreign
countries, or accompanied expeditions to remote parts of the earth,
did much to develop the art of water-colour painting, may be matter
of doubt. In their persons, however, the professional importance
of their class of draftsmen was raised ; and by the nature of the
subjects, their works contributed to enlarge the mind, as they gave to
the landscape painter a wider field of observation. But it must be
remembered that the public before whom such works have to be laid
(the ' gentlemen who stay at home at ease,' while tliey are braving
' the danger of the seas ') are in no position to judge of the truth of
representation, or of the painter's appreciative taste. That power of
his, upon the captivating strength whereof the value of his art so much
depends— the power to charm the spectator by enabling him again to
realize a scene by which he has himself been impressed — is of no avail in
1 See account of his life and works in Redgrave's Dictionary of the English School.
• Eugene Delacroix in Rn'iie de Paris, 1829.
54 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
such a case. We look with a curiosity inspired by the strangeness of
the prospect or its incidents, and think less of the artistic merit of the
drawing itself than we do when the scene is of a more familiar kind.
Our interest resembles that of the antiquaries in the earlier days, who
knew nothing of landscape as a fine art, and made no demand for
pictorial quality. With home scenery the case is different, and it has
accordingly been to the study of nature in the British Isles that we
chiefly, or almost entirely, owe our national development of landscape,
and with it of water-colour painting.
There have, however, as we shall now see, been some notable
exceptions to the rule. Among the landscape draftsmen of this
time who were indebted to the patronage of wealthy persons for
opportunities of study in foreign parts, there were two, nearly of the
same age, in whose works are recognizable a distinct advance upon
the art of their contemporaries, and who, each in his own different
way, exercised an important influence upon that of their immediate
successors. These were John Robert Cozens, born in 1752 ; and
the John Smith mentioned above as one of the draftsmen employed
for some of the earlier plates in Middiman's views. Both went to
Italy as landscape draftsmen, but Cozens's visits to that country
ended some years before Smith's began. The name of ' Italian '
Smith is associated chiefly with the technical improvement of water-
colour art. That of Cozens is imperishably connected with its advance
towards a higher aim and the development of its aesthetic quality.
John Robert Cozens, more familiarly known as 'John Cozens' simply,
came of artistic parentage on both sides. Little is known directly of
his youth ; but he must have lived in' an atmosphere of art, such as it
was. His father, Alexander Cozens, was a fashionable teacher of
drawing, who had among his pupils the Prince of Wales and other
persons of rank, was professor of the art at Eton College from
1763 to 1768, and for a time resided at Bath, where he adopted a
system of instruction which gained him great popularity among
amateurs.
A rumour,ormore than a rumour,of Imperial descent, may have shed
a halo of interest in society over the person of ALEXANDER COZENS.
By birth a Russian, he is said to have been a natural son of Peter the
Great by an English woman whom he took from Deptford. As Peter
was working in the dockyard there in 1697, it has been conjectured ' that
1 See the Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue of Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings,
CH. v TRAVELLING ARTISTS; AND ALEXANDER COZENS 55
Alexander Cozens was born about 1698, a date scarcely, however, in
accordance with those assigned to the active period of his life and the
publication of his writings. They seem to imply a later time of birth:
We are told, moreover,1 that the Czar had, by the same mother, another
son, who became a general in the Russian service. Alexander may
have been a younger brother. The Emperor sent him to Italy to
study painting, whence he came from Rome to England, in 1746,
the year in which Tom Sandby sketched the field of Culloden, while
Paul was drawing fortifications at the Tower.
Here Cozens married a wife, who, in 1752, gave birth to his more
eminent son. Biographers' accounts of Mrs. Cozens and her family are
in some confusion. Edwards 2 calls her a sister of Robert Edge Pine,
portrait and history painter ; but Redgrave3 says she was his daughter.
As, according to the last-named authority, this Robert Edge Pine was
only ten years old at the date of John Cozens's birth, this could
scarcely be ; and we are left to suppose that she was the sister. If
so, she must have been another and an older child of John Pine,
engraver, who, according to the same writer, was Hogarth's convivial
friend ' Friar Pine,' the original of the fat ecclesiastic in the great
humourist's picture of 'Calais Gate.' But even here historians differ.
In the roll of British artists there are Pines and Pynes, between whom
it is not easy to make due distinction. One of a later date, the W.
H. Pyne before quoted, whom we shall have presently to deal with as
one of the immediate founders of the Water-Colour Society, tells us 4
that it was Robert Edge Pine himself who was so painted by Hogarth
and dubbed ' Friar ' by his jolly companions. The probability is that
the engraver sat to Hogarth ; and that it was his daughter, the
painter's sister, who became the drawing-master's wife.
However that may be, Alexander Cozens taught drawing to the
fashionable circles at Bath in the gay old times when there were
' congregated there from all quarters of the globe not only the invalid to
gain health from the thermal springs, but the idle, the dissipated, and
also the lovers of the arts.' 5
It was in 1771 that Sheridan, then a young man of twenty, went
with his father's family to reside at Bath. In the same year the new
Assembly Rooms were opened ; and Smollett published Humphrey
1 Leslie's Handbook for Young Painters. 2 Anecdotes.
* Dictionary of the English School. 4 Wine and Walnuts, i. 116 ».
5 Life of Sheridan, prefixed to Bohn's edition of his Dramatic Works.
56 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY nK. I
Clinker^ In the same year also Robert Edge Pine came to Bath to
paint portraits, having left London in a fit of ill temper against the
President of the Spring Gardens Society of Artists. He practised at
Bath till 1779, and we may fairly conjecture that it was during the
same period that his brother-in-law was engaged in giving lessons to
the Lydia Languishes and Julias of the day in the new and fascinating
amusement of landscape composition.
Alexander Cozens has been styled (as have several other artists)
the ' father ' of our water-colour school. It would be more accurate to
call him the father of its schoolmasters. He seems to have been the
first who professed to conduct amateurs along a royal road to the
production of pretty pictures, without imposing upon- them the hard
study and careful observation of nature necessary to a thorough
practitioner in art. Dayes, in his Professional Sketches, calls him
' Blotmaster-general to the town.' Certainly, his method of teaching
was peculiar, and savoured somewhat of mechanical trick. Yet it
may be fairly contended that such a method has more within it of the
elements of thoughtful art, than the mere setting up before a student
of objects to copy. Cozens's appears to have been suggested by some
observations of Leonardo da Vinci's, on a saying attributed to
Botticelli, that a palette full of colours being thrown against a wall
would leave a stain behind it properly enough representing a land-
scape. ' It is true indeed,' says Leonardo, ' that by the help of a
strong fancy one may spy heads, battles, rocks, seas, clouds, woods,
&c., in a wall so smeared ; it being here as in the ringing of bells.
where everybody is at liberty to make them say what he pleases ; but
then, though a fortuitous mixture of colours may start a hint, or give
rise to a new invention, yet it will not furnish the least assistance
towards the execution or finishing anything it has occasioned.'
Having thus guarded himself against the charge of advocating such
a method of inspiration as a substitute for invention, the great Floren-
tine himself recommends a very similar course in the following
words : —
' Among other things I shall not scruple to deliver a new method
of assisting the invention, which, though trifling in appearance, may
yet be of considerable service in opening the mind and putting it
1 Anstey's New Bath Guide, upon which Smollett's account of Bath is greatly founded,
was published in 1766. Sheridan's Rivals was first acted in 1775, and Miss Burney's
Evelina came out in 1778.
en. v TRAVELLING ARTISTS ; AND ALEXANDER COZENS 57
upon the scent of new thoughts ; and 'tis this. If you look at some
old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some streaked
stones, you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds,
uncommon attitudes, humourous faces, draperies, &c. Out of this
confused mass of objects the mind will be furnished with abundance
of designs and subjects perfectly new.'
Cozcns's process, according to Edwards,1 was ' to dash out upon
several pieces of paper a number of accidental large blots and loose
flourishes, from which he selected forms, and sometimes produced
very grand ideas ; but,' adds the same writer, 'they were in general too
indefinite in their execution and unpleasing in their colour, for being
wrought in dark brown or bister they appeared sombre and heavy in
the extreme, similar in their effect to the appearance of nature when
viewed through a dark-coloured lens.' Cozens demonstrated this
process in a small published tract, entitled A New Method of Draw-
ing Original Landscapes. It is obvious that the value of such a
method lies in its application. The artistic eye looks upon all things
with reference to their combinations and proportions of form, quantity
and colour, and these it recognizes in an old wall as well as in a land-
scape or other scene. The inartistic eye sees them in neither, and
cannot perceive the analogy, or just applicability of the one to the
other. To the mind of Alexander Cozens his method may have been
admirably suggestive of effects of light ; as one educated under more
modern influences will see in a card smoked over a candle the most
delicate gradations of a Turneresque chiaroscuro.
Pyne, commenting, in his outspoken way, upon certain tricky
methods of teaching, which in his own later time had exercised a
baneful influence on water-colour art, denounces, in unmeasured terms,
this haphazard method of composing landscapes. . In the Rise and
Progress of Water-Colour Painting in England, the elder Cozens
claims that writer's notice, only for having, at Bath, ' too successfully
practised upon the credulity of the amateurs of style, who frequented
that fashionable resort of wealthy listlessness. Will it,' he asks, 'be
believed hereafter that a professor of painting should undertake to
splash the surface of a china plate with yellow, red, blue, and black,
and taking impressions from the promiscuous mass, on prepared
paper, affect to teach his disciples and those persons of education
and elegant minds to work them into landscape compositions ? This,
1 Anecdotes of Painting, 119.
58 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
however, he attempted, and the charlatanery succeeded, for he had a
host of scholars for several seasons, who rewarded him most munifi
cently for his wonderful discovery ! ' '
If the first parentage of our water-colour school be too high an
honour to attribute to Alexander Cozens, it is not necessary thus to
cast upon him the imputation of degrading its practice. He, like
the draftsmen who preceded him, was in a great degree a product of
his time. His teaching was supplied in answer to a rising demand
which he had not been the first to create. The kind of practical
dilettantism which the elder Cozens employed his talent in fostering,
was to exercise in the coming age a strong influence on the develop-
ment and application of water-colour art.
If, however, the love of landscape-sketching, which has long dis-
tinguished English amateurs, and in our own day remains as prevalent
as ever, is to be traced to the influence of one individual, that one is
more probably Gainsborough. He had resided at Bath for fourteen
years, at the end of which period he went to settle in London, in
1774, at about the time when the career of Cozens began at the
former fashionable resort. Although Gainsborough's large landscapes
had but a poor sale in London, his rural scraps and picturesque frag-
ments, executed slightly, but with telling effect, and apparent ease,
presented models which fired the amateur with a natural desire to
imitate, and a hope of catching their attractive manner. ' That
inimitable painter,' says Pyne, ' unwittingly set the fashionable world
agog after style ; but he did not enter the lists as a teacher, nor
would he have allowed youth who had advised with him upon
art to waste their time in attempting to learn what no one could
teach. The copyists, or rather dabblers in his new style, were full-
grown amateurs, polite idlers at Bath, who vainly fancied, forsooth,
because this rare genius could, by a sort of graphic magic, dash o?f
romantic scraps of landscape, rural hovels, wild heaths, and pictu-
resque groups of rustics, that they had but to procure his brown or
blue paper, and his brushes and pigments, and do the like. . . . The
Gainsborough mania,' adds Pyne, 'was long the rage; and there are
yet ' (he is writing in December 1823) ' some antique beaux and belles
of haut ton, who recollect their many friends who, with themselves,
were stricken with this sketching phrenzy, and smile at Bath and its
vanities, as they talk of the days that are gone.'2
1 Somerset House Gazette, \. 162. * Ibid.
CH. v TRAVELLING ARTISTS; AND ALEXANDER COZENS 59
It was in the field so well prepared for him by Gainsborough that
Alexander Cozens trod his path of successful tuition. Leslie says that
he taught the figure as well as landscape. He was also a theoretical
writer on art, and besides the tract above mentioned, published the
following works : Treatise on Perspective, and Rules for Shading by
Invention, 1765; The various Species of Composition in Nature;
' with observations, &c.,' containing sixteen subjects in four plates ;
The Shape, Skeleton, and Foliage of Thirty-two Species of Trees,
'for the use of Painting and Drawing,' 1771 (another edition, 1786) ;
and The Principles of Beauty, relative to the Human Head, folio,
1778. This last is a curious essay, being an attempt to build up
expressions in female profiles, by piecing together sets of features,
selected according to prescribed receipts from a store of single exam-
ples previously assorted and indexed. It mainly consists of a series
of nineteen outline plates engraved in life-size by F. Bartolozzi ; two
being devoted to the separate eyes, noses, &c., and seventeen to their
combinations in faces representing distinct types of beauty, such as
the Majestic, the Sensible, the Tender, the Artful, &c. &c. Transparent
removable headdresses are added, designed to serve up each face in
varied fashion. The titles and explanatory text are given in English
and French. Nearly all the plates are dated April 1777. The book
must have been talked of for more than one season, as Banks the
sculptor exhibited, at the Royal Academy in 1783, a ' Head — on
Cozens's principles.'
Alexander Cozens does not appear to have resided entirely at
Bath. His address, given in the Royal Academy Catalogue for 1772,
is ' Leicester Street, Leicester Fields ; ' and there he is said to have
died, in April 1786.
60 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
CHAPTER VI
JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH
John Cozens — Teaches by example— Early drawings— His 'Hannibal' — Influence on Turner
— Visit to Italy with Payne Knight — Buys his father's lost sketches — Second visit with
Beckford— Loss of reason — Kindness of Sir G. Beaumont and Dr. Monro— Date of
death —Character of his art — ' Warwick' Smith — His views of Italy — New process of
painting— Engraved works.
THE more important and lasting, though less direct, influence of this
drawing-master's greater son, JOHN COZENS, upon landscape art, was
of an altogether different nature from his. The younger Cozens
appears to have been abroad when his parent was giving lessons in
Bath, and is not known to have been himself engaged in tuition. He
taught by example, not by precept. The works which he left behind
him bespeak his mind as an artist, and simple and elementary as they
are in a technical point of view, have never failed to impress the true
connoisseur with a sense of their poetic feeling.
Little is known of the facts of his life, except what is sufficiently
apparent in his drawings, that he received his inspiration of natural
beauty in the tender repose of Italian air. Leslie mentions a very
small pen-drawing of three figures inscribed with the words, ' Done by
J. Cozens 1761, when nine years old.' He must, if this statement be
true, have been fifteen when he exhibited ' a drawing of a landscape '
at Spring Gardens in 1767. One or more landscapes, of which the
particular subjects are not mentioned, are attributed to him in the
catalogues there every year between 1767 and 1771. Then comes an
interval ; after which, when he was twenty-five, a picture by him, said
to have been in oil, appeared at the Royal Academy Exhibition of
1776, of 'A landscape with Hannible in his March over the Alps,
showing to his army the fertile plains of Italy.' It might now have
a second title referring to the history of peaceful art, for in it the
artist was himself unfolding to his professional brethren the charms
of Italian landscape. The great Turner, to whom, above all other
CH. vi JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH 61
painters, was transmitted the inspiration of Cozens, is said to have
spoken of this work as one ' from which he learned more than from
anything he had then ' seen.'
The picture must have been painted during his first visit to Italy,
which took place in the same year, 1776, in company with R. Payne
Knight. A set of fifty-seven grey drawings, formerly in the Town ley
collection, afterwards in that of the late Hon. Rowland Allanson
Winn,2 and now more or less dispersed, which were a result of this
visit, evince the artist's delicate perception of atmospheric effect, his
sense of beauty, and masterly grasp of a subject, with the simplest
means of expression.
A very few of these sketches are from the North of Italy. And
further evidence exists that Cozens was in Florence in 1776. For
there are at the British Museum a series of views, in Rome, and
elsewhere in Italy, by the elder Cozens, accompanied by the fol-
lowing (unsigned) memorandum : ' Alexander Cozens, in London,
Author of these Drawings, lost them and many more in Germany,
by their dropping from his Saddle when he was riding on his way
from Rome to England, in the year 1746. John Cozens his son
being at Florence in the year 1776, purchased them. When he
arrived at London in the year 1779 he delivered the drawings to his
Father.' 3
Edwards tells us that Cozens visited 'Italy twice. His second
journey thither may have been due to his father's position at Bath.
It was made in company with, and under patronage of, the accom-
plished and eccentric millionnaire William Beckford, author of Vatliek,
and owner and rebuilder of Fonthill Abbey. It is not to be inferred
that Beckford discovered this artist's genius, or even aided in bringing
1 So says Leslie in his Life of Constable. The word ' then ' must refer to the time when
Turner saw the work, and is therefore indefinite. When the picture was exhibited, Turner
could not have seen much in the way of art. He was one year old.
2 When the volume containing them came into Mr. Winn's possession, it was inscribed
' Views in Swisserland, a present from Mr. R. P. Knight, and taken by the late Mr. Cozens
under his inspection during a Tour in Swisserland in 1776.' Dr. Percy, however, makes
the following note in his catalogue, respecting this volume : ' Bought at R. P. Knight's sale
by Molteno, who sold them to Rowland Winn, Esq., the present possessor, 1870.'
3 One of these drawings is signed ' A. C. Roma 1746.' They are mostly in grey, executed
with pen and brush, rather niggled in the pen-work, with some attempt at light and shade
effect, and, generally, the conventional dark foreground. Some drawings with the pen only
are in the manner of line engravings. One view has some crude colour with bright blue-
greens. Leslie sees in them ' much of elegance and feeling of the beautiful forms of nature. '
( Handbook for Young Painters. )
62 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. i
it to maturity, though he may have contributed to the sentiment of
his art. When Cozens painted his ' Hannibal,' the late alderman's
son was a lively lad of seventeen ; and his patronage of art, though
not inconsistent with the appreciation of poetic style in painting, which
the imagination he afterwards displayed would lead one to expect,
was at this time chiefly of a negative character. He was exercising
his literary talent upon a ludicrous burlesque history of the Dutch
painters, and in mystifying his mother's housekeeper, and the
strangers who came to see the treasures of the Fonthill gallery, by
furnishing her with wondrous accounts of the pictures there, painted
by the distinguished old masters, Sucrewasser of Vienna, Watersouchy
of Amsterdam, and Og of Basan. It was not until the spring of
1782 that young Beckford, then of age, and master of his immense
fortune, set off for his second tour on the Continent, taking with
him a considerable retinue — his old tutor, a doctor, a musician, and
Cozens, as the professional artist, without whom the suite of a
wealthy dilettante on his travels was now scarcely to be regarded as
complete.
Since writing his Vies de Peintres Flainands, the young Croesus
had seen more of the world. He had spent a year and a half at
Geneva, had travelled about in England, and, early in 1780, had set
out with his tutor, Dr. Lettice, on what was called ' the grand tour.1
As he traversed the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, his early
attachment to nature had become more and more developed,1 and
the romantic scenes through which he passed had impressed them-
selves upon him in a manner which his subsequent descriptions of
them show to have been well in accord with the sentiment embodied
in the works of Cozens. Here is a verbal picture of a scene in the
Tyrol which might either have suggested, or been suggested by, one
of that painter's drawings : ' Big drops hung on every spray, and
glittered on the leaves, partially gilt by the rays of the declining sun,
whose mellow hues softened the rugged summits, and diffused a
repose, a divine calm, over this deep retirement, which inclined me
to imagine it the extremity of the earth - the portal of some other
region of existence — some happy world beyond the dark groves o;
pine, the caves and awful mountains, where the river takes its
source ! ' *
It was through this Tyrol country that the party in three carriages,
1 Memoirs of Bcckford, 2 vols. 8vo, 1859 : vol. i. p. 168. 2 Ibid. 169, quoted.
CH. vi JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH 63
with led horses and outriders, entered Italy. On the way Beckford
' ran on foot into the woods, admiring the delicate foliage on all
sides, while the artist Cozens drew the huts that were scattered
about the landscape.' ' They drove rapidly to Venice, were ten days
at Padua, and then went to Rome. Here again the sombre scenes in
which he sought relief from pageantry that he little cared for, are just
what would have taken captive the heart of Cozens. They reached
Naples in July, and returned to England in the latter part of the year.
In 1804, the year of the founding of our Society, ninety-four of the
Roman drawings made for Beckford by Cozens were sold at Christie's
for 5O4/., one of them alone fetching, it is said, fifty guineas. A view
of Rome (i8i x 29 in.) by him has in recent times been twice
sold at Christie's (1875, 1880) for 84/.2
Cozens's end was a very sad one. In 1794 he lost his reason.
Leslie * considers that there is evidence of a failing mind in some of
his works, wherein ' that pensive sadness which forms the charm of
his evening scenes sinks into cheerless melancholy.' The following
note is made by Dr. Percy in his manuscript catalogue, now at the
British Museum, on Cozens's drawings : ' Did Cozens in his last
years, owing to increasing melancholy, use colour less and less? This,
so far as I know at present, seems to me probable. It is a point for
special inquiry. — J. P. June 19, 1881.'
In the days of his mental affliction, poor Cozens was befriended by
two generous patrons of art ; namely, Sir George Beaumont, and one
whose name is more conspicuous in the history of our water-colour
school, good Dr. Thomas Monro. What the latter did for the art
itself will shortly be related. It was as a physician, skilled in like cases,
that he was able to perform his kind service to this afflicted artist.
Edwards relates that, receiving little or no gratuity, he treated him
with the greatest care and tenderness till his death, which is said to
have been in 1799.*
Cozens's works belong, technically speaking, to the old class of
'stained drawings.' Depending, however, for their effect, more on
1 Memoirs of Beckford, \. 207.
* Redford's Art Sales. The total amount is elsewhere stated at SID/.
1 Handbook of Painters.
1 This date is adopted by Bryan and Redgrave. Dayes and Constable make it three
years earlier; and a doubt is thrown on both statements by the existence of a drawing lately
in the collection of Dr. Percy, of Castel Gandolfo, pronounced by connoisseurs to be the
work of Cozens, but executed on paper bearing the date 1801.
64 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY UK. I
masses and gradation of light and shade than on line and form, they
are more aptly described by Edwards as ' tinted chiaroscuro.' The
brush did much more to them than the pen. The Messrs. Redgrave,
indeed attribute to him the first move in the right direction in the
use of his pigments for the suggestion of true colour ; and further, an
acquaintance with ' the use of gentle washings, and abrasion of the
surface to give atmosphere and distance, or to indicate sun rays
through intercepting clouds,' as well as a mastership of light and
shade, and the use of accident' in painting.1
The highest tribute of admiration to the genius of Cozens has been
paid by the landscape painter John Constable, and by that artist's
biographer, Leslie. The former, in hyperbole, once went so far as to
call him ' the greatest genius that ever touched landscape.' He speaks
of his drawings as ' keeping him cheerful.' ' Cozens,' says he, ' is all
poetry.' ' But,' adds Leslie, ' it is poetry that wins gently and
imperceptibly. So modest and unobtrusive are the beauties of his
drawings, that you might pass them without a notice ; for the painter
himself never says, " Look at this or that ; " he trusts implicitly to your
own taste and feeling, and his works are full of half-concealed beauties
such as Nature herself shows but coyly, and these are often the
most fleeting appearances of light. Not that his style is without
emphasis, for then it would be insipid, which it never is, nor ever in
the least commonplace. This exquisite artist had an eye equally
adapted to the grandeur, the elegance, and the simplicity of
Nature ; but he loved best, not her most gorgeous language, but
her gentlest, her most silent eloquence.' 2
Although Cozens's drawings are for the most part studies of real
places and scenes in nature, their motive is something very different
from that of the pure topographer. There exist careful drawings of
architecture by him,3 finished with precise elaboration, which entitle
him to a place in that category. But the works on which his fame
rests have another origin. They are based on the general principles
of beauty, not on the attractions of local, or historic, or human
interest.
That the palette of John Cozens was very limited, was a matter
of necessity in his day, common to all who practised in water-colours.
1 Century of Painters, \. 379. 2 Leslie's Handbook for Young Painters.
1 For example, the view of Rome, with St. Puter's and the Castle of St. Angi-lo, above
mentioned.
CH. VI JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH 65
Although a great improvement in the manufacture of colours had
already begun, Redgrave tells us that in about 1783 he 'could only
procure for his tinted works Indian red, lake, indigo, yellow ochre,
burnt sienna with black — simple materials indeed, and very inferior,
doubtless, in their preparation to those at the command t>f the water-
colour artists of our day.' ' That very grand and impressive effects
can be produced with this restricted palette has been amply proved
in the works of some of our old water-colour painters ; the more so
probably by the necessity imposed upon them of relying more upon
the resources of a fine chiaroscuro for their power over the mind,
than a painter is required to do when he has at command all the
sensuous attraction of gay and florid colour of every variety of hue.
Cozens, indeed, did not seek to attract by the use of many or bright
pigments. It is, almost alone, by simple quantities and subtle
gradations of light and shade, that he succeeds in stirring the soul.
It is rather surprising, therefore, that so few of his drawings have
been engraved. There were in his day admirable engravers in line,
as well as scrapers of mezzotint, to whom they might have been ex-
pected to prove attractive. How well they lend themselves to the
former mode of reproduction is shown by a small plate of the
Acrocorinthos, engraved by John Landseer, in vol. iii. of Stuart's
Athens, ch. vi., PI. IV. ; and to the latter by an example in Leslie's
Handbook for Young Painters. Cozens did not himself draw much,
if at all, for the press. It is probable that his works were little known
in his lifetime, and that the fine quality of his art was not much
appreciated beyond a narrow circle of connoisseurs.
The inspiration which JOHN SMITH derived from Italian scenery
was different in its nature from that of John Cozens. He had pre-
pared his mind by studying the works of Claude and Poussin, and it
was with a taste so cultivated that he made his acquaintance with
the original scenes. He ' attempted to unite depth and richness of
colour with the clearness and aerial effect of Cozens.' 2
The two artists have here been named together chiefly because
they afford examples of the direct kind of patronage bestowed upon
graphic art during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Smith
was taken to Italy by the same Earl of Warwick who has already been
mentioned as a patron of Paul Sandby's. That nobleman had himself
1 Catalogue of Water-Colour Paintings in South Kensington Museum, 1877, p. 17.
1 MS. Notes by J. \V. Papworth.
66 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
early in life cultivated a natural taste for drawing and ' acquired a
rapid and masterly style of sketching landscape. His fancy in
designing rocks and waterfalls, and that species of romantic scenery
which abounds in the mountainous parts of Switzerland and Italy,'
says Pyne, 'was so prolific, that many subjects could have been
selected from his numerous portfolios which might, in the hands of
an able artist, have been wrought into magnificent pictures.' ' From
this companionship our artist acquired the nicknames by which he is
familiarly known, of ' Italian ' or ' Warwick ' Smith.
He was three years older than Cozens, but long survived him, and
lived not only to see the culminating period of the water-colour
school, but to be far surpassed by later contemporaries.
The technical change in practice which he introduced did not
take place until the career of Cozens had virtually ended. In
May 1785, when Middiman published his last plate after Smith,
both the above draftsmen were using the old tinted grey manner of
drawing from which Cozens never emerged. In the following year,
Smith began his Italian drawings, and in the later of these, among dates
ranging from 1786 to 1795, are found a free use of local colour and
a partial abandonment of the preliminary grey ground.
It is not quite clear when he commenced the simple and har-
monious method of painting which John Landseer thus describes
in his Review of Publications of Fine Art, published in 1808: —
' Mr. John Smith,' he says, ' first discovered and taught the junior
artists the rationale of tempering their positive colours with the
neutral grey formed by the mixture of red, blue and yellow : that this
grey, constituted of all the primary colours, would harmonize with
any, and form a common bond of concord with all, and that, tempered
with a little more or less of warm or cool colours, as time, or climate,
or season might require, it became the air tint, or negative colour
of the atmosphere which intervened between the eye and the several
objects of the landscape.'
In part in the British and in part at the South Kensington Museum,
are a series of drawings, chiefly of Italian subjects, by ' Warwick ' Smith,
presented to the nation by Sir Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart, which
exemplify the tender harmony and agreeable warmth of Smith's colour-
ing, and contrast with the coldness of the earlier school.
John Smith was born at Irthington, Cumberland, on the 26th of
1 Somerset Home Gazette, i. 30.
CH. VI JOHN COZENS AND JOHN SMITH 67
July, 1749, and educated at St. Bees. Some of his early drawings,
engraved in Middiman's series, are of his own north country. He
published two quarto volumes in 1792-96 entitled Select Views in
Italy, containing seventy-two plates engraved by Byrne, with topo-
graphical and historical descriptions in English and French. A
Tour through Parts of Wales, ' Sonnets, Odes, and other Poems by
W. Sotheby, with engravings from drawings taken on the spot by
J. Smith," 4to, 1794, contains thirteen plates (5 x 7^ in.) in aquatint
by S. Alken, printed on a rather dark-toned paper. Some of these
have a fine feeling almost suggestive of Cozens. Views of the Lakes
by him were aquatinted by Samuel Alken, and published by W. Clarke
in New Bond Street in 1795- John Smith is named as one of the
draftsmen for Byrne's Britannia Depicta, the first part of which was
published in 1806, but he only contributed five views, viz. : Two of
' Windsor,' the ' Vale of Aylesbury,' and ' Buckingham ' (the plates
dated i Jan. 1803, and engraved by Wm. Byrne) ; and one of ' Beeston
Castle' (24 Jan. 1810, by J. Byrne). In 'A Tour to Hafod in
Cardiganshire, the seat of Thomas Johnes, Esq., M.P., F.R.S., &c.
folio, 1810, there are some very large coloured aquatint plates by
Stadler after J. Smith's drawings ' taken many years ago.'
r 2
68 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. i
CHAPTER VII
TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI
Drawing masters — Sandby — Gresse — Laporte — Payne — His 'style ' — Water-colours a
fashionable amusement — Society of Arts premiums— Artists' materials improve — More
topographical series— S. Ireland — Walker's 'Copper Plate Magazine' — Dayes — Other
draftsmen employed — Patrons and collectors — Dr. Mead — Duke of Richmond —Dr.
Monro — His drawing class.
WHILE landscape draftsmen were thus being enabled by wealthy
persons to extend their experience and cultivate their art in foreign
climes, those who stayed at home were deriving a different kind of
encouragement from the same class of benefactors. The admiration
which had been attracted by the water-colour artists was testified
by the sincerest kind of flattery, that of imitation. An emulative
influence prevailed in London circles like that with which Gains-
borough's rural sketches had erst inspired the amateurs of Bath ;
and, as Alexander Cozens had prospered there, so a race of teachers
sprang up who pursued their calling in the metropolis.
Most prosperous and influential among the drawing-masters of
the day was our old acquaintance Paul Sandby, during probably a
great part of his long life. The youthful drawings made by our
great-grandmothers, that still repose, cold and grey, in well-moulded
black frames, on bedroom walls in old-fashioned red-brick houses
in the country, bear unmistakable marks of being modelled after the
example of Sandby's once popular style.
Another very fashionable teacher of the day was JOHN ALEXANDER
GRESSE, an artist of Genevese parentage. His name survives in
that of a neat little back street lying between Rathbone Place and
Tottenham Court Road, where his father had property, which he
inherited. It was in his time, and long after, a neighbourhood much
occupied by artists. 'Jack Grease,' as he was vulgarly called, in
punning recognition of his foreign name and corpulent figure, enjoyed
Court patronage, was teacher to the princesses in 1777, and is said to
have amused the King at the same time with gossiping talk. His
CH. VII TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 69
manner of drawing, quite the ideal of the old method of tinting on a
grey basis, is admirably shown in an example at the South Kensington
Museum, an unfinished view of ' Llangollen Bridge,' in which the artist
has been interrupted in his work at a point which enables us to see at
a glance his course of proceeding. The result of an education and
previous practice as an engraver is apparent in the extreme neatness
of the preliminary outline. He had had instruction from the en-
gravers Scotin and Major and from the landscape painter Zuccarelli,
had worked for Cipriani, and was an exhibitor of drawings and minia-
tures at the Incorporated Society's. On his death, at the age of fifty-two,
in 1794, a collection which he had formed was dispersed in a six days'
sale.1 Gresse's careful exactness of manner was transmitted to, and
can be recognized in the work of his pupil Robert Hills, one of the
actual founders of the Water-Colour Society.
JOHN LAPORTE was a much younger man than Gresse, but con-
temporary with him as a teacher of water-colours. Besides being
employed in private practice, he became one of the masters at
Addiscombe military college. ' He painted landscapes," -says Red-
grave,2 ' introducing cattle with effects of sunset and morning, rain
and showers, and some views of Lake scenery.' He lived from 1761
to 1839. Among his pupils were Dr. Thomas Monro, the great
benefactor to water-colour art, already mentioned in connection with
poor Cozens.
Among the artists employed by Middiman we come upon another,
whose work for the engraver was, or afterwards became, quite sub-
ordinate to his drawings made for their own sake, and whose talent
was also called into great requisition by the amateur artists. WILLIAM
PAYNE, whose name is attached to four subjects in Devon and
Cornwall, dated March 1788 and January 1789 in the series of
plates above referred to, was in fact one of the leading draftsmen of
his day, and one of the first who ' abandoned mere topography for a
more poetical treatment of landscape scenery.'3 It is not known
how old he was when in 1790 he left his native Devonshire, a county
prolific of painters, where he had lived in the neighbourhood of the
above subjects, namely at Plymouth Dock, now called Devonport,4
1 Redgrave's Dictionary. 2 Dictionary of the English School.
* Century of Painters, i. 383.
4 Ruskin states that, when Samuel Prout was a boy at Plymouth, ' the art of drawing
was little understood ' there, 'and practised only by Payne, then an engineer in the citadel."
(Art Journal, i March, 1849.)
70 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
and came to try his fortune in London, taking up his residence in
Thornhaugh Street, Bedford _Square. His drawings seem already to
have attracted attention. He had begun to exhibit with the Incor-
porated Society as long before as 1776, and since 1786 had sent
Devonshire views to Somerset House. The President of the
Academy praised his drawings, particularly some views of slate
quarries at Sir Joshua's own native place, Plympton.
Pyne relates that his small works, ' brilliant in effect and executed
with spirit,' were ' regarded as striking novelties in style,' and ' no
sooner seen than admired.' Yet, after the date of his arrival in
London, he ceased to be an exhibitor at the Royal Academy.
His professional career was henceforth to be directed by a different
kind of patronage to that of the buyers of his water-colour draw-
ings. His 'style' had taken. The young ladies of society desired
to add so fascinating a form of drawing to the list of their ac-
complishments, and ' almost every family of fashion ' was anxious
that its sons and daughters should have the benefit of his tuition.
Payne appears to have been the very man to satisfy this demand.
He had effected a real advance in water-colour art, better adapting
it to the imitation of the natural scenery, and the effects of sun-
shine and of cloud, which it was now called upon to represent ;
and, besides this, he had reduced his practice to a system which
could easily be imparted to others. The simple old method of
staining and tinting must have been thoroughly well known by this
time, and in matters of technique there was nothing new to be
got out of Sandby and Gresse. But Payne was the possessor of
what was called a ' style,' ' the power of reproducing which in one's
own drawings could be secured at the price of a certain number of
lessons. He thus proved himself equal to the occasion, and hence
' for a long period, in the noble mansions of St. James's Square,
and Grosvenor Square, and York Place, and Portland Place, might
be seen elegant groups of youthful amateurs manufacturing land-
scapes a la Payne.' 2
1 The term 'style,' used ' in the phraseology of fashion' (i.e. in its lower sense of a
special process or manner which can be taught and imitated, as distinguished from its higher
signification, implying a certain dignified refinement that is above the reach of the mechanical
copyist), ' originated,' according to Pyne, ' with the drawings of Mr. Payne. ' See Somerset
House Gazette, \. 133.
~ Somerset House Gazette, i. 162. Four ' Books, Landscapes from Drawings by Payne,
engraved by Bluck,' are advertised at the end of A Treatise on Ackerrnann's Water- Colours,
&c. (1801).
CH. VII TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 71
The following account of his course of proceeding is given by the
Messrs. Redgrave : — '
' He abandoned the use of outline with the pen. His general
process was very simple. Having invented a grey tint (still known
by the colourmen as Payne's grey), he used it for all the varied
gradations of his middle distance, treating the extreme distance, as
also the clouds and sky, with blue. For the shadow in his fore-
ground he used Indian ink or lamp-black, breaking these colours into
the distance by the admixture of grey. In this he but slightly
differed from the artists of his time ; but his methods of handling
were more peculiarly his own. These consisted of splitting the brush
to give the forms of foliage, dragging the tints to give texture to his
foregrounds, and taking out the forms of lights by wetting the sur-
face and rubbing with bread and rag. . . . Having thus prepared
a vigorous light and shadow, Payne tinted his distance, middle dis-
tance, and foreground with colour, retouching and deepening the
shadows in front to give power to his work, and even loading his
colour and using gum plentifully. He sought to enrich scenes wherein
he had attempted effects of sunset or sunrise, by passing a full wash
of gamboge and lake over the completed drawing.'
Pyne says this ' process certainly was captivating, as exhibited in
his happiest works, though much of their merit was the result of
dexterity and trick, as exemplified by the granulated texture obtained
by dragging, the fallacy of which process was sufficiently exposed in
every attempt at composition on a larger scale in the same style.' 2
That writer condemns Payne's teaching as the commencement of a
period when ' established principles ' were superseded by ' the more
fascinating properties of dashing colouring and effect. The method of
instruction,' he says, ' in the art of drawing landscape compositions
had never been reduced so completely to the degenerate notions of
this epoch of bad taste as by this ingenious artist.' 2 The remark
made above on Alexander Cozens's haphazard method of making
landscapes is equally true of Payne's regulated course of technical
procedure. Its value depends on its artistic application. He may
have enabled many of his pupils to record for themselves the beautiful
appearances of nature, and some amateurs may have had observance
and taste enough to profit by the possession. But there were doubtless
1 Century of Painters, \. 382-3. * Somerset House Gazette. \. 162.
72 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
more who took the means for the end, and, instead of going to nature,
were content to copy the works of their teacher.
Whatever may be thought of the nature of their various nostrums,
this congregation of doctors implied the existence of something like
an epidemic of water-colour painting that had already become pre-
valent among amateurs. Some of the symptoms of the disease when
at its highest are humorously described in the following skit, which
appeared in or about the year 1787 : '"What a fine, clear morning!
I will do my sky. Betty ! tell your mistress, if anyone calls, I can't
be seen — I'm skying. Betty ! Betty ! bring me up a pan of water,
and wash that sponge : it really is' so hot, I cannot lay my colour
smooth. Where's the flat brush ? Oh dear ! that Prussian blue is
all curdled." " Please, pa, ma says, will you take any refreshment ? "
" Get away ! get away ! how ever can your raz think about refresh-
ment, when she knows I'm doing my sky ? Th;_re, you've knocked
down my swan's quill, and how am I to soften tl is colour ? It will
all be dry before you wash out the dirt. Give me that brush. Oh, it
is full of indigo ! There is the horizon spoilt ! Quick ! quick ! some
water ! Oh, that's gall ! And the sky is flying away ! Why did your
mother send you here ? She might have known that I was skying." '
The attention which was being paid in high circles to the practice
of drawing by amateurs, as well as the influence attributed thereto
upon art itself, may be inferred from a list of ' Premiums for Pro-
moting the Polite Arts,' offered by the Society of Arts in 1790.
Among ' Honorary Premiums for Drawings ' there are a gold and a
silver medal 'for the best drawing by sons or grandtons,' and the
like for ' daughters or granddaughters, of peers or peeresses of Great
Britain or Ireland,' and ' for the best drawing of any kind by young
gentlemen under the age of twenty-one;' and again, 'the same
premiums will be given for drawings by young ladies.' The amateur
character of the competition is secured by the concluding proviso :
' N.B. Persons professing any branch of the polite arts, or the sons
or daughters of such persons, will not be admitted candidates in these
classes.' 2
While emulation was thus encouraged, and instruction, both
sound and specious, was obtainable by the unprofessional as well as
1 Quoted in Thornbury's Life of Turner, p. 85, 2nd edit.
* See an advertisement dated 14 May, 1790, in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ix.
part I, p. 458.
CH. vii TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 73
the professional student, the popular use of water-colours, and also
their application to a more complete form of painting, was facilitated
by a better manufacture of artists' materials. ' About 1780,' says
Mr. Redgrave,1 'a great improvement began. Up to this time every
artist had to prepare his own dry colours, which for want of sufficient
knowledge of their chemical properties, and the leisure to grind and
prepare them, gave him much trouble, and produced ' most un-
satisfactory ' results. They were, in fact, very bad, the materials
ill selected, their fixed or fugitive qualities unknown, and when pre-
pared they were scarcely fit for use. The dry colours, after grinding
with water in gum, were moulded into a lump by the fingers. At
the above date Messrs. Reeves turned their attention to the pre-
paration of water-colours for our artists, and first moulded them into
the form of cakes (as they are now called), on which their name
was impressed. Their success was early acknowledged, and in 1781
the Society of Arts awarded their great silver palette to Messrs.
Thomas and William Reeves for their improved water-colours.'
*,
While the art was developing under these various impulses, the
topographic draftsmen continued to exercise their calling. Recurring
to Middiman's volume and continuing to turn over its leaves, we find
upon a plate of ' Cliefden Spring, Bucks,' dated 25 May, 1785, the
name Samuel Ireland. This artist afterwards took up on his own
account the trade of topographic-print making, and published, in 1792-
93, volumes of Picturesque Views, on the Thames, the Medway, and
the Severn, which he aquatinted himself from his own sketches.
Early in the year 1792 a new venture was made, in the publication of
a series of small engravings of the same class as ' Sandby's Views,'
and ' Watts's Seats.' It took the old name of The Copper Plate
Magazine, with a second title of Monthly Cabinet of Picturesque
Prints; which it further described as ' Sublime and Interesting Views
in Great Britain and Ireland, beautifully engraved by the most emi-
nent artists, from the Paintings and Drawings of the First Masters.'
The issue was commenced in shilling2 monthly numbers containing
two prints apiece. These being collected in a volume at the end of
1 Descriptive Catalogue, pp. 16, 17.
2 At the end of vol. iv. , viz. in May 1800, it was announced that, owing to the price of
paper having nearly doubled and the expense of every other department having very con-
siderably advanced, there was a monthly loss, and that the future price would be \s. 6d. per
number.
74 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
every two years, the complete work contains 250 plates, bearing dates
from I Feb. 1792,10 i June, 1802. The first volume was published
by Harrison and Co. of Paternoster Row ; but in the second the name
of J. Walker, engraver, of 16 Rosomon's Street, Clerkenwell, was
added, and afterwards the plates were printed for Walker alone.
Hence, and to distinguish it from Kearsley's older work of the same
name, it is usually known as ' Walker's Copper Plate Magazine.'
These volumes are in oblong quarto, the plates being accompanied by
descriptions printed on separate leaves. A portion of the subjects
were also printed, each on the same page with its letterpress, and this
folio edition was called The Itinerant. Many of the views are of
towns ; but the old element of gentlemen's seats is largely included, as
well as ruined abbeys, &c., and existing public buildings. Most of the
plates, latterly nearly all, were engraved by Jo/in Walker, at first in con-
junction with his father William Walker, who died on the i8th of
February, 1793, before the first volume was complete. This elder
Walker was, says Redgrave,1 ' employed for nearly thirty years upon
the illustration of the publications of the day, and also engraved some
good plates for Alderman Boydell. Early in life he discovered the
valuable art of rebiting etchings, and Woollett, who occasionally used
the process, when successful was wont to exclaim : " Thank you,
William Walker." '
Although the plates in this new copper-plate magazine have no
special claim to admiration as specimens of engraving,2 the series is
of considerable historic interest, not only as carrying on the succession
of works designed to illustrate British topography, but because it
contains the earliest engraved designs of the two artists who, more
than any others, are regarded as the regenerators, if not the actual
founders, of our modern school of water-colour painting. Their names
are Thomas Girtin and (as he then signed himself) William Turner.
' T. Girtin ' is the designer of a view of Windsor, published in the
fourth number, as Plate VII., with the date I May, 1792. He was then
about seventeen years old, and probably the youngest of the artists
employed. He had not received his full inspiration, and risen to his
true standard. The name of Turner, who was of the same age
(within a year) as Girtin, does not appear until two years later, namely
1 Dictionary of the English School.
* Among the generally mediocre plates by Walker are a few of a better class, by
Medland, Filler, Heath, and Middiman.
Cir. vn TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 75
with the date i May, 1794, attached to Plate LV. in the second
volume, a view of Rochester.
Some of the other men who drew for Walker's magazine in its
opening year demand prior notice by reason of their seniority. One
of them, who drew the first plate, a view of Oxford, was 'EDWARD
DAYES, a sound topographic draftsman, who tinted over Indian ink,
in the established manner of the day, with accuracy and grace, and
excelled in architectural subjects, enlivening them with careful groups
of well-drawn figures. He had learned, too, from William Pether to
scrape mezzotints, and practised that art as well as painted in minia-
ture. He took pupils in drawing, and young Girtin had for a time
been bound to him as an apprentice. The date of his birth is not
known ; but he began to exhibit at the Academy in 1786. A careful
view of Greenwich Hospital, by him, with boats and figures, in the
possession of Mr. Henry Pilleau, M. R.W.I., is dated 1788. There is a
tinted drawing by him at South Kensington, representing Buckingham
House, St. James's Park, almost a figure subject, dated 1790; and
another of Ely Cathedral, drawn in the year 1792 (that of Walker's
first plate), in which we may perceive an advance towards the full use
of colour. Further mention will have to be made of Dayes as a
writer on art, as well as in other ways less to his credit.
F. Wlieatley, R.A., before mentioned, was another of the contri-
butors of views to this first year's issue of the Walker prints. Richard
Corbould, father of a family of good draftsmen, and himself a man of
varied accomplishments, who painted (in oil and water-colour) history,
portraits, landscapes and miniature enamels, was another. A view of
Cliefden by him, engraved by Heath on Plate XX., is fine and broad
in effect. He was at this time thirty-five years old, and had begun to
exhibit in 1776 at the Free Society. He lived till 1831, dying in that
year at the age of seventy-four. Then, a year younger than Corbould,
there is Charles Cation, Junior. His father was a Royal Academician,
and he a scene-painter, who also travelled and sketched for the
topographic publishers. He was better known as a painter of animals.
Edward Francis Burney, well known by his small book illustrations as
an elegant figure and subject designer, also gives us a couple of views,
one of his native town of Worcester. Old Paul Sandby also
reappears, in a capacity in which landscape draftsmen had now begun
to be habitually employed, that of putting into shape the works of
amateurs. For example, Plate XXIII., ' Londonderry,' I Jan. 1793,13
76 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
drawn by Sandby ' from an original sketch by J. Nixon, Esq.' Among
the so-called ' First Masters ' who took part in this ' monthly cabinet,'
there were also persons outside the bounds of the profession, whose
drafts were not so settled by a regular practitioner. Their engage-
ment may be taken as further evidence of the extending practice of
dilettante art.
More important among the new names is that of Francis Nichol-
son, who contributed two views, dated August and December 1792.
Nicholson was one of the earliest of our draftsmen to convince him-
self of the power of water-colour to compete with oil, and also one of
the first to put his theory into practice. He was at this time thirty-
nine years of age. His name had first appeared in the exhibition
catalogues in 1789, and a dozen years afterwards he became one of
the foundation members of the Water-Colour Society. By that time
he had matured his practice, and there will in due course be much
more to say both of his works and of himself.
It will have been seen that water-colour draftsmen had hitherto
been much less under the influence of precedent than had their
brethren who painted in oils. In the practice of their craft there was
not so much to learn from pictures by the old masters. Thus they
had but slightly participated in the advantages, which had been de-
rived by the more established branches of their profession, from the
liberality of possessors of fine works of art, in rendering them avail-
able for study. Many instances of such liberality are recorded in the
last century. The earliest conspicuous example is that of Dr. Richard
Mead, who died in 1754, aged eighty-four, ' a celebrated physician
and great patron of artists and other men of genius. He for several
years resided in the city, and latterly in New Orrnond Street. He
was one of the first collectors who threw open his gallery of pictures
to the students and all amateurs of art. His house, indeed, might be
said to have been the first academy of painting.' '
Then, in the month of March 1758, the Duke of Richmond
opened for young students his statue gallery at Whitehall, ' furnished
with casts of the most celebrated ancient and modern figures at Rome
and Florence,' 2 with the result, it is said, of inducing a purer taste in
figure-drawing. There are few lives of eminent English painters of
that transitional time, in which an early inspiration is not traced to the
sight of some old master's work in the private galleries of the wealthy.
1 Somerset House Gazette, \, 35 «. 2 Pye's Patronage of British Art, p. 83.
CH. vil TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 77
The age was now approaching when the landscape draftsmen also
would have some early masters to look up to for the formation of
their taste, and as models of style ; and opportunities for making such
profitable retrospect were afforded at the epoch at which our chronicle
has now arrived. There chanced to be an amateur, whose fine and
cultivated taste and practical knowledge, combined with a warm-
hearted spirit of benevolence, and an earnest desire to foster a rising
school, of which he discerned the promise of excellence, enabled him
about this time to do a most essential service to some young aspirants
in this branch of art. This was Dr. THOMAS MONRO, already men-
tioned as the kind friend in need to John Cozens during the affliction
under which that artist ended his days. As a leader of connoisseur-
ship, he was looked upon in his day much in the same light as
Sir George Beaumont and Mr. Payne Knight. But in the exercise of
his patronage he was specially distinguished by the services he
rendered to water-colour painting, in these its early days. The
Earl of Essex, Mr. Lascelles (' Prince Lascelles ' as he was called, from
his likeness to the Prince of Wales), Dr. Monro, and Dr. Burney,
with two or three more, seem to have been the chief encouragers of
this branch of art ; but none to have taken more effectual means to
promote the education of young artists than Dr. Thomas Monro.
He was the youngest son of Dr. John Monro. His father, who had
recently died, in 1791, at the age of seventy-six, had also been en-
dowed with an elegant taste, and his collection of books and of prints
was very considerable. Deeply versed in the early history of en-
graving, he gave great help to Strutt in his work on that subject.
There were at least five generations of Dr. Monros,1 beginning with
John's father, Dr. James Monro (born 1680, died 1752). They were
chiefly known in their profession by skill in the treatment of insanity.
The member of the family with whom we are particularly concerned
was one of the physicians who attended King George the Third, as
well as poor John Cozens.
It was in or about the year 1793 that Dr. Thomas Monro, then
1 There is some excuse for confusion among so many doctors of one name. And when
we read of three more Dr. Monros, a father and two sons, of a Scotch family, who distin-
guished themselves as physicians and writers of scientific works, the pedigree becomes even
less determinable. Redgrave {Descriptive Catalogue S.K.M. p. 23) is one generation behind
in attributing Dr. Thomas Monro's patronage of water-colour art to Dr. John Monro.
Thornbury (Life of Turner) and others spell the name 'Munro.' Possibly, also, the fact
that Mr. Munro of Novar was a great collector of Turner's works, may have helped to
mislead some writers.
78 WATER-COLOUR ART IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BK. I
thirty-four years of age, removed from Bedford Square, where he had
previously resided, to No. 4 or 6 Adelphi Terrace, which row of
houses had been built about twenty years before by the brothers
Adam, and then overhung the Thames as it now overhangs the river
embankment. His house was filled with pictures and drawings, many
by Gainsborough, hanging on the walls, and he allowed them to be
freely copied by young artists. These he took great delight, too, in
assisting with his advice. He was himself an able amateur drafts-
man, a pupil (as above stated) of Laporte's, and an ardent sketcher,
as well as worshipper of works of art.
The story has often been told of Sir George Beaumont's practice
of taking Claude's little picture of ' Narcissus ' with him to look at
while he travelled. Dr. Monro was an enthusiast of like habits. So
fond was he of works of art that he was never satisfied without some
of them in sight. Inside the roof of his carriage he had a netting
placed,1 in which he always slipped a folio of drawings when he went
to his country house at Fetcham 2 in Surrey. At home he contrived
to have his drawings so arranged that they could readily be removed
in case of fire.
He seems to have had a special fondness for Gainsborough. ' Of
all the imitators of that painter's ' style of sketching,' says Pyne, ' per-
haps excepting the late Mr. Hoppner,3 he was the nearest to his
prototype.' The same writer declares that he had 'seen many of
these pasticci ' which it would ' puzzle the cognoscenti to detect from
the originals.'4 It was this Dr. Monro who is mentioned above as
having purchased from Gainsborough's daughter her father's interest-
ing ' camera'
Dr. Monro's patronage of young artists was not confined to giving
them access to his pictures and portfolios, and letting them make
copies, and assisting them with his own judicious advice. He had a
pleasant way of bringing them together, on a system which combined
the benefit of this kind of study with mutual instruction, and with a
small pecuniary profit to them at the same time. In winter evenings,
1 J. J. J. ex relationt C. Varley.
1 A view of Dr. Monro's house at Fetcham, by Thomas Girtin, was bought for the South
Kensington Museum, at Dr. Percy's sale, 17 April, 1890.
* A large number of Hoppner's slight landscape sketches in black chalk on grey paper
are at the British Museum.
1 Somerset House Gazette, ii. 8. A chalk drawing answering to this description was in
the collection of the late Dr. Percy.
CH. vii TEACHERS, DRAFTSMEN AND DILETTANTI 79
he encouraged young men to make a studio of his house. There
they put their sketches into pictorial shape under the doctor's eye,
and he gave them their supper and half a crown apiece for their
work. Desks were provided, with a candle which served for two
sketchers, one sitting opposite to the other. Not a few of our best
water-colour painters thus derived benefit from their early practice at
Dr. Monro's ; but the most distinguished of all were the two future
artists, whose names must ever be linked together as the real
founders of our water-colour school — Girtin and Turner.
BOOK II
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN
CHAPTER I
TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS.
Girtin and Turner with Dr. Monro — Early drawings — Mutual relations — Different disposi-
tions— Turner's admiration of Girtin — Girtin's birth, parentage, and early life — Appren-
ticed to Dayes — Imprisonment and release — Colouring prints — London river scenes —
Work for architects— Mr. Henderson — Masters studied by Turner and Girtin— Girtin's
exhibits at the R.A. — Sketches in Wales —Teaches amateurs — Taken to North by Mr.
Moore— Influence of mountain scenery —Draws again for ' Walker's Magazine ' — Changes
of address — Charged with mannerism — Processes and materials — Taking out lights— F.
Nicholson and the Earl of Warwick — Influence of Girtin's 'style' — His perseverance —
Habits when sketching — Patrons.
TURNER and Girtin were of one age, born in 1775, and acquainted
before they studied together at Dr. Monro's and perhaps shared the
same candle of a winter's evening. It is not exactly known at what
dates they began to work there, or how long they so worked in com-
pany. A memorandum by the late Mr. John Pye, the engraver, tells
us that the first mention of Turner in Dr. Monro's journal is in
1793, and that Girtin was not employed by him as long as Turner
was. He says that ' Dr. Monro engaged them at two or three shillings
apiece and a good supper, to put in effects of black and white and of
colour into black lead outlines.' When the Doctor removed to Adelphi
Terrace,1 they were on the verge of manhood, and the proficiency of
each had been already recognized. Girtin, as we have seen, had had
a design engraved by the Walkers in the new ' Copper Plate Magazine '
in 1792 ; and Turner, who had been an Academy student since 1789,
1 Dr. Monro had also a country house at Bushey, near Watford, besides that at Fetcham.
Turner told David Roberts, R.A., that he and Girtin had often walked to Bushey and back
to make drawings for their kind patron, at the price above stated. (See Watts's 'Biogra-
phical Sketch of Turner,' prefixed to the Liber Fluviorum, p. xi. )
82 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
had in 1790, when fifteen years of age, shown his first work at
Somerset House, a tinted drawing of Lambeth Palace,1 to be followed
by others for many successive years.
Dr. Monro had himself been buying Turner's youthful drawings
at two guineas apiece,2 from his father, a thrifty little hairdresser in
Maiden Lane, Covent Garden ; who, having many customers, had
managed to establish a good connection among patrons, to the
advantage of his clever son. Young Turner had now set up a studio
of his own, in Hand Court, close to his father's shop.
The acquaintance between Girtin and Turner is said to have
commenced during a joint employment, as lads, to colour prints for
John Raphael Smith, painter and mezzotint engraver, who also carried
on an extensive trade, as a publisher and print-dealer, in King Street,
Covent Garden. It is not improbable that the Doctor's acquaintance
with them was made while they were thus engaged. There is not
much known as to what kind of original work Girtin produced under
Dr. Monro's hospitable roof; but Turner's grey drawings, some of
them based perhaps on his host's own sketches, are met with from
time to time. When Dr. Monro's collection was sold, in 1833, Dr.
Burney and Turner were together in the sale room. ' I understand,"
said Turner, pointing to some of the lots to which his own name
was attached, ' that you have the bad taste to admire these things
more than I do now.1 ' It will be sufficient for me to say,' answered
the polite connoisseur, 'that I admire everything you do, Mr. Turner.'
' Well,' returned the other, a little flattered, ' perhaps they are not so
bad ; for half a crown — and one's oysters.' 3 It is possible that Girtin
also may have had a hand in some of these drawings, there being
good authority for saying that he made a great number of outlines,
some of which the Doctor got Turner to tint in grey, and just work
afterwards with colour ; and that Girtin complained of this as not
giving him the same chance of learning to paint.4
It was by the attraction of like proclivities in art alone that the
two lads were brought together. As they grew up, it appeared that
1 The drawing was lent by Mrs. Courtauld to the Turner collection at the Royal
Academy in 1887. A view of the gateway, belonging to Mr. P. C. Hardwick, apparently
of about the same date, was among the ' Drawings of Architectural Subjects ' exhibited at
the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1884.
> Pye's MS. Notes.
• This was told to Mr. Jenkins in April 1865 by James Holland, who had it from Dr.
Burney himself.
* This was told to Mr. Jenkins by Cornelius Varley on I January, 1858.
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 83
their characters and tastes were in other respects widely different.
Turner, it is well known, was reticent of his knowledge, and close as
to his methods of work. Girtin, on the other hand, was of an open,
careless, and sociable disposition, always ready to impart what he
knew, and assist even his rivals in art. As to their ' human relation-
ship,' we have, as Mr. Monkhouse observes, in his ' Life of Turner,' '
very little information. ' Turner,' he writes, ' always spoke of Girtin
as" Poor Tom," and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to
his memory ; but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what
we all mean by " friendship " ever existed between them.' 2 What
Girtin thought of Turner we do not know ; but the latter declared
that ' Tom was a brilliant fellow,' 3 and always expressed a high
admiration of his abilities. Girtin's son, however, told Mr. Jenkins
that he had twice written to Turner upon some matter of interest to
him about his father, but that Turner never had the courtesy to
answer his letters. Although Turner's name is, as it deserves to be,
incomparably the greater in the history of painting, that of his short-
lived confrere in art demands for several reasons the first, and in
some respects a higher, place in the present record.
THOMAS GIRTIN was the elder son of a rope-maker in Southwark,4
who is said to have done a large business in cordage for shipping.
Dying young (Thornbury says he was killed when hunting), he left
his two boys, Tom and Jack, to the care of his widow, who took
rooms for the three ' over a shop ' at No. i St. Martin's-le-Grand, in or
about the year 1783. Such at least is the date if, as it is alleged,
Tom Girtin was eight years old at his father's death. For he seems
to have been born on the i8th of February, 1775. Some writers,
including Pilkington, Redgrave, and Miller, misled apparently by an
obituary notice in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' give the date 1773,
which may there be a misprint. But the date 1775 accords with the age
given, both on his tombstone and by Dayes (to whom he had been
1 Page 24.
a The same writer adds : ' We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between
Turner and Dr. Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to show
that they ever met after Turner's students days were over.' Pye declared (MS. Notes)
that, in Dr. Monro's opinion, the great painter was ' blunt, coarse, vulgar, and sly.' So
perhaps his patron may not have sought his society.
3 J. J. J., ex relatione Mr. Chambers Hall.
* No more is known of his ancestry ; or of a certain ' I. Girtin ' (called 'James ' in the
Catalogue of the South Kensington Art Library), who etched a series of poorly executed
Portraits of Celebrated Painters, published, with some by other hands, in 410, 1817.
G 2
84 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. n
apprenticed), and also assigned to him by his own family. Pye, in
his MS. Notes, gives the same date, as copied from a mourning ring
worn by his widow, and — best evidence of all — from one worn by
his mother, who survived him.
' From his earliest childhood,' says Pye,1 ' he displayed a decided
passion for drawing and modelling ; ' covering ' every scrap of paper
that came to hand,' add the Messrs. Redgrave,2 ' with his boyish
fancies ; but,' continue the latter writers, ' as he himself said that
other boys of his own age, ten or twelve, who amused themselves or
idled in the same way, drew as well as himself, we may be assured
that there was nothing very marked in these childish efforts.' His
mother, humouring his taste, allowed him to take some elementary
lessons in drawing from one Mr. Fisher, of Aldersgate Street, close by ;
and, when he was old enough, apprenticed him to Dayes.
Thornbury, in his ' Life of Turner,' give a melodramatic account
of Dayes's unjust behaviour, and Girtin's subsequent rescue from his
tyranny. The apprentice, finding himself regarded only as a means
of getting money, and that he was paying back in work more than
the value of his premium, rebels, and is cast into prison for contu-
macy. There he shows his genius by decorating with landscapes the
walls of his cell. They astonish the warder and attract the curious ;
and then there comes upon the scene a deus ex machina in the shape
of the great Earl of Essex, who buys up the indentures, burns them
before the young artist's eyes, and carries him off to ' the almost regal
uxury of Cassiobury, where Girtin, free and happy,' produces ' some
of his greatest works."
All this reads rather like a picturesque romance introduced for the
sake of a learned parallel drawn from the life of ' Fra Lippo Lippi ; '
and some will prefer the tale in the less varnished, if somewhat caustic,
words of John Pye.3 Young Girtin, he tells us, soon excelled his
master, which 'this jealous and small-minded creature ' never forgave
him. The praise bestowed upon his pupil was gall to him, and
increased his hatred. In order to check his progress, he employed
him to colour prints week after week and month after month. This
was his employment till, feeling himself designed for better things, he
expostulated with Dayes, telling him he was placed with him to learn
to draw, not to colour prints. His tyrant insisted on his obedience.
' MS. Notes.
1 Century of Painters, \. 387 ; and see Library of Fine Arts, iii. 310. * MS. Notes.
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 85
Girtin refused ; on which Dayes committed him to prison as a
refractory apprentice. The Earl of Essex, hearing of his imprison-
ment, went to see him, and saw that he had covered the walls of his
room with spirited sketches. Pleased with the young man's frank
and open manner, he released him from confinement and from the
tyranny of Dayes by buying up his indentures ; and from that time
to the day of Girtin's death, the Earl continued to be one of his
kindest friends and patrons.
We have seen, however, that Girtin in these days was not above
turning an honest penny by ' colouring prints.' It was shortly after
his pupilage with Dayes that he was engaged by Raphael Smith for
this sort of work. The occupation was not quite of the infantine
kind which we are accustomed now to consider it. It is true that
modern children get an early knowledge of colour from so using their
boxes of paints ; but it is also true that water-colour art itself was, in
its infancy, almost confined to a similar practice. There exists a
curious treatise, a tract of sixty-four octavo pages, ' printed for J.
Peele, at Locke's Head in Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, 1731,'
entitled The Art of Painting and Drawing in Water-Colours, ' put
together,' as the writer tells us, ' after years of study and labour, at
the instance of a noble friend for his instruction ' in the said art. It
treats mainly of the sources and mode of preparation of certain
' transparent colours of every sort.' But the chief or only use to which
these pigments are described as applicable, is the colouring or tinting
of engravings. One of the leading chapters is headed, ' Of colours
for illuminating of prints in the best manner, or of Painting in Water
Colours.' And the few practical instructions which follow, show that
there is a certain technique to be studied even in so apparently simple
an operation. If the paper be ' pure white,' no colour is to be used
upon it. All 'heavy colours,' that is to say colours with much body, such
as vermilion and Indian red, will, unless used in moderation, ' drown
the shades or strokes of the engraver.' Sometimes, however, adds the
writer, in a saving clause of perhaps unintended irony, ' they had better
be hidden than preserved.' ' From this early colouring of engravings
' The work concludes with a description of a ' portable case for colour,' to be mnde in
ivory with thirty-two circular cavities, for pigments to use with gum-water, not unlike in
arrangement the tin field-sketching boxes in familiar use in the present day. But the writer
has no idea of such an apparatus being used for landscape after nature. He merely recom-
mends it to ' such persons who are curious in making observations of the colours of flowers,
86 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. n
the use of transparent water-colour had been extended, as we have
seen, to the staining and tinting of grey drawings ; and when aquatint
came afterwards to be extensively employed as an efficient means of
multiplying such coloured designs almost in facsimile, the occupation
of washer became, as we shall see, a regular branch of business, in
which many persons were employed by the publishers of prints. It is
not a bad kind of drill for training a young artist's hand ; for some
practice is required to lay washes evenly and of due tone, as indeed to
do anything well, down to so simple a matter as turning the handle of
a barrel organ.
But Girtin, and Turner with him, were at the same time taking
lessons from nature. The shores of the Thames at Westminster,
Lambeth, and Chelsea, not then, or for very many years to come,
bound in and stiffened by a granite border, but irregular and ragged,
with a garniture of mud-banks, and abounding in picturesque groups
of stranded barges, floating river-craft, and old ramshackle wharves,
afforded prolific subjects for an artist's pencil. Girtin said that a
study he made of the steps of the old Savoy palace then in ruins ' was
a lesson from which he dated all the future knowledge he displayed in
the pictorial representation of ruined masonry.' ' Thus they acquired
skill with the brush, which got them other professional work besides
that of colouring prints. Between 1788 and 1790 both Girtin and
Turner were employed by architects to wash in skies and perhaps add
backgrounds as well as to lay flat tints. And so we find Tom Girtin
at seventeen or eighteen selected to make topographic drawings for
Walker's magazine,2 and one of the young artists at work at Dr.
Monro's.
There was another amateur and collector of landscape drawings, a
very near neighbour of Dr. Monro's, who, probably following his
example, allowed young artists to make copies from the works of
older masters. This was Mr. John Henderson, who lived at No. 3 or
No 43 Adelphi Terrace. Both Girtin and Turner availed themselves
largely of the privilege so offered ; and as the copies they made, or
to have always in their pocket.' Mr. Redgrave {Descriptive Catalogtie, 1 6) points to the
republication of this work in 177° as evidence that the materials of water-colour art had not
improved at the latter date.
1 Redgrave's Century of Painters, i. 388-9.
* One was the 'Windsor,' published I May, 1792, before mentioned ; the other was
•Woolwich,' published I May, 1793.
' Thornbury's Life of Turner, p. 55, 2nd edit.
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 87
some of them, remained in Mr. Henderson's possession, and have now,
under his son's bequest, become national property, they may be studied
as living illustrations of the early tastes and tendencies of these two
artists, and of the difference between them.
' It would seem that the processes of education they respectively
adopted were the inverse of one another ; that Girtin acquired a style of
his own by sketching from nature, and used it as a language to interpret
the works of other artists ; while Turner, in the early part of his career,
studied the works of other artists in order to obtain a command of their
style and manner, that he might apply them afterwards as he found occa-
sion in the varied interpretation of nature. It was not until he had tried
his hand against every painter in succession that he formed his own
distinctive style. In the wide range of his practice, the great painter
comprised, absorbed, and finally assimilated all. It is fair to assume
that among the original artists from whom he learnt a lesson was his
early friend and companion, Tom Girtin.
' Turner was a pupil of Malton's, and Girtin of Dayes's, but it
happened that each studied for practice the works of the other's
teacher. Turner's copies from Dayes were so nearly facsimiles, that
they have deceived collectors, whereas Girtin's drawings after Malton
have his own colour and handling engrafted upon the light and shade
of the original.' '
' Girtin's drawings made for Mr. Henderson in or before I793/
says Pye,2 'are, as far as outlines go, three copies of Malton's
engraved views, the Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, and St.
George's Church. They are like Malton's in form and perspective ;
but in nothing else. They are invested with new effects, being com-
posed alike of colour and clair-obscur, and can only be justly appre-
ciated by being seen. The subjects respectively are so changed that
by being seen in new dresses beside the prints, they receive irresistibly
the charm of fine art.' There are also copies by Girtin from Canaietti,
Piranesi, Hearne, Marlow, and Morland, in the same collection, which
are impressed with like originality. At Mr. Henderson's, Turner is
said * to have preferred copying from Hearne, while Girtin copied from
Canaietti and Piranesi. The biographer of Girtin in the ' Gentleman's
Magazine ' tells us that Canaietti was the first master that struck his
attention forcibly ; and his earliest penchant appears to have been
1 The Spectator, 14 Aug. 1875. "• MS. Notes.
8 Miller's Picturesque Weil's hy Turner and Girtin.
88 LIFE AND' TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
for architectural subjects of the kind treated by that painter. It
might be added that the same feeling is manifested in the last work
on which his dying hand was engaged — his series of views in Paris.
He is also said to have derived much profit from a study of Wilson.1
In 1794, the year in which the life of Cozens virtually ended,
Girtin had his first work at the Academy. It was a drawing of ' Ely
Minster.' From that time till the year 1801, the last but one of his
short life, he continued to exhibit annually except in the year 1796.
He is said to have made a journey into Wales in 1794, but no Welsh
subject is named among these until 1799, when he sends -two views of
' Bethkellert.' Next year, 1795, he has two drawings, 'Warwick
Castle ' and ' Peterborough Cathedral.'
We also hear less of Girtin than of Turner, as employed by archi-
tects. The latter is said2 to have been still engaged in 1796 in
supplying their drawings with pictorial attraction. But Girtin, besides
affording this aid to professional brethr n, was beginning to be in
request by amateurs. He found profitable occupation in giving them
lessons,3 and their sketches were placed in his hands that he might
put in the appropriate ' effects.'
He was not a student of the Academy, but, as Pye observed,4 he
does not appear to have been less conversant with the elements of art
than Turner, who was an Academy student. For landscape art was not
taught in the schools. Its rules had not been formulated, and its
growing traditions were as yet possessed by a few practitioners only.
Girtin's taste and knowledge led to his employment in a capacity
allied to that which had given experience to the pencils of Cozens
and ' Warwick ' Smith. He was taken, not into Italy, but, what was
more conducive to the development of his natural style, into the
mountainous and picturesque regions of his own country. He became
the travelling companion of Mr. James Moore, F.S.A.,5 an antiquary
and amateur topographer, to whose introduction to the scenery of
Scotland and .Yorkshire is attributed a change which now came over
1 Library of the Fine Arts, hi. 317. 2 Letter from the late Mr. Bonomi to John Pye.
8 Turner also gave lessons when a young man. ' There are old people still living,' says
Thornbury, ' who remember Turner in 1795 or 1796— that is to say, when he was twenty or
twenty-one, and taught in London, at Hadley (Herts), and at other places.' His biographer
is probably right in adding : ' He was too reserved and too tongue-tied to be able to teach
what he knew, even had he cared to disclose his hard-earned secrets.'
4 MS. Notes.
5 ' Girtin, Turner, and Dayes at various times travelled with Mr. Moore to execute
drawings for him, for his topographical works.' — J. J. J.
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 89
his manner of painting, and a sudden strengthening, in his hands, of
the power of water-colour art. Inspired by the 'dark and true and
tender ' North, he ' began to treat mountain and lake scenery in a
manner very different from his predecessors,' imitating the effects of
' heavy overhanging clouds throwing the vast mass of a mountain
which occupied the whole distance under a deep and solemn mass of
gloom.' l A ' daring style of effect ' and a ' grandeur and originality
of conception in light and shadow,' for which he was soon to become
celebrated, arose, it is said, from a chance observation of the solemn
change produced by twilight in a scene of buildings, bridge, and river
in an ' ancient town,' whereof he had made a midday outline under
the broad sun. Hence, acquiring ' a habit of looking at Nature,
clothed in her morning and her evening robe,' he was afterwards
enabled to ' throw either garb over his own landscape compositions
at his will.' 2 He became ' fond of contrasting cool shadows with
warm and brilliant lights spread over the picturesque ruins in which
he delighted, giving by these means an appearance of sunshine and a
splendour of effect, startling to those who had been accustomed to
the tamer manner of the topographers, or even to the poetical tender-
ness of the works of Cozens.' 3
Girtin is said to have accompanied Mr. Moore to ' Peterborough,
Lichfield, Lincoln, and many other places remarkable for their rich
scenery, either in nature or architecture ; ' 4 and the subjects of his
drawings, exhibited or engraved, show that he made sketches in
various parts of England and Wales. It was probably in 1796 that he
first went to Scotland. He had nothing at Somerset House that year,
and nothing from his hand had been published in Walker's magazine
since May 1793. But he has no fewer than ten drawings in the
Academy exhibition of 1797, two from Scotland, two from North-
umberland, and six from York, besides an elaborate interior of St.
Alban's Church 5 which shows that as an architectural draftsman he
had already arrived at the maturity of his power.
In the ' Copper Plate Magazine,' volume iii., with various dates in
1 797, there are ' Warkworth,' ' Newcastle-upon-Tyne,' and ' Bamborough
Castle,' as well as ' Marlow Bridge,' by Girtin, and also the following
1 Redgrave's Century of Painters, \. 390-3. 2 Somerset House Gazette, i. 82.
1 Redgrave's Century of Painters, ubi supra. 4 Thornbury's Life of Turner, p. 76.
5 Formerly in the possession of Sir William Tite, and afterwards in that of Mr. Edward
Cohen. It was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1871 and 1875, and at the
Grosvenor Gallery in 1877-78.
90 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
plates from ' Sketches by James Moore, Esq.,' viz. ' Lincoln,' ' Duff
House, Bamffshire,' ' Exeter,' ' Elgin Cathedral,' and ' Jedburgh Abbey,'
in all of which, though Girtin's name does not appear, there can be
little doubt that he had a hand. But these prints of Walker's do
not enable us to form a judgment as to the quality of the original
drawings.
He had by this time left his mother's lodgings in St. Martin's-lc-
Grand. In 1797 we find him at 35 Drury Lane. The next year he
is at 2 5 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and in 1799 at 6 Long Acre.
Thus Girtin, young as he was (he attained his majority in 1796),
became established as an artist of note, and, what was more to his
professional advantage, as a favourite teacher of water-colour drawing.
As had been the case with Gainsborough, the manner of Girtin's
painting, broad in its generalization, and well adapted to express his
conceptions in an abstract form, had in it some salient features which
attracted a host of superficial imitators. An effective opposing of
warm colours to cold, and dark tones to light, and a unity obtained
by the sacrifice of detail and of natural variety, were all that con-
stituted in their eyes the ' style ' of Girtin. On the strength, in part
at least, of their imitations, Girtin himself has been charged with
affectation, and a tendency to degenerate into a mannerist ' or a
chiqueur? Dayes, his old master, who was never cured of the grudge
he bore his too clever pupil, declared that because ' master Tom
chose to wash in dirty water,' his imitators not only washed in dirty
water too, but ' in the very puddle water which he had made more
dirty.' And when, shortly before Girtin's death, a portfolio of crude
works by a disciple of the school was placed before Dayes for
approval, he persisted in holding them up to ridicule as the result of
an application of ' the blue bag.' 3
It is not to be inferred, however, from the above remarks, that
Girtin's teaching was of a superficial character, or that he was ever
likely to become a trickster, like Payne. He ' did not,' says his
biographer Miller, ' flatter amateurs, and pretend to teach them
secrets for money.' The Dowager Duchess of Sutherland (who in
Girtin's time was Lady Gower), one of many persons whom he
taught in the higher ranks of society, used to say that ' he told every -
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 82. * Redgrave's Century of Painters, i. 396.
1 Somerset House Gazette, utii supra.
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 91
thing' to his favourite pupil Lady Long,1 wife of Sir Charles Long,
afterwards Lord Farnborough. ' He would point out the time of
the day, the cast shadows and particular effect suited to the time
and scene &c. — a mode of teaching far in advance of the time.'2
Nor did he confine the benefit of his instruction to the wealthy
dilettante, who paid him so much a lesson. His painting-room was
ever open to his brother artists, and he was always happy to give
them the benefit of his advice and instruction. Indeed, he was often
blamed by his friends for allowing them to stand over him while at
work, that they might see how he produced his effects.3
It is perhaps due to this open liberality of Girtin's that writers
have been able to describe his technical processes in considerable
detail. The following account is extracted from the Somerset House
Gazette* ' Girtin made his drawings, with but few exceptions, on
cartridge paper.5 He chose this material as his aim was to procure a
bold and striking chiaroscuro, with splendour of colour, and without
attention to detail.' Then, beginning with the sky : ' The azure spaces
were washed with a mixture of indigo and lake, and the shadows of
the clouds with light red and indigo, Indian red and indigo, and an
%
1 Pyne, writing in 1824, says that Lady Long, besides being, like her husband, a patron
of the fine arts, ' was known to the world of art ' as having ' a talent for painting and draw-
ing that might fairly rank her with the professors of the living school,' and that ' among the
admirers of that lady's topographical drawings, none were more ardent than Girtin.'
(Somerset House Gazette, ii. 129.)
' J. J. J. ex relation }. Holland. « J. J. J. < Vol. i. pp. 66, 83, 84.
* ' He was the first,' says his biographer in the Gentleman's Magazine, 'who introduced
the custom of drawing upon cartridge paper, by which means he avoided that spotty glitter-
ing glare, so common in drawings made on white paper.' ' It is said that the wire-worked
cartridge he loved to work on was only to be obtained at a stationer's at Charing Cross, and
was folded in quires. As the half-sheet was not large enough for his purpose, he had to
spread out the sheet, and the crease of the folding being at times more absorbent than the
other parts of the paper, a dark blot was caused across the sky, and indeed across the whole
picture in many of his works. This defect was at first tolerated on account of the great
originality and merit of his works, and gradually gave a higher value to those in which it
occurred, being considered a proof of their originality.' (Redgrave's Century of Painters,
'• 393-4- ) ' But,' writes Mr. Papworth (MS. ) ' in those days paper was paper ; it was made
of white linen rags reduced to pulp by a badly made wooden machine which left it fibrous.
Shortly afterwards Mr. Whatman produced, at his manufactory in Kent, a paper called
vellum paper, which at once superseded all other fabrics. Its texture was calculated to receive
the pigments and to bear out [sic] with a vigour of effect that the wire-marked paper could
never be brought to possess." Then 'the progress of science taught the means of adulteration,
the use of materials which chemically quarrel with each other and the colours, and the
employment of superbly finished machinery which leaves no fibrous texture. ... In a short
period the damage of such operations was felt by Turner, who found that his paper required
preparation ; and even a quarter of a century had not elapsed before " old paper " was
worth a guinea a sheet to men like Harding.'
93 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
occasional addition of lake. The warm tone of the cartridge paper
frequently served for the lights without tinting, acquiring additional
warmth by being opposed to the cool colour of the azure, and
shadow of the clouds. . . . When he had accomplished the laying-in of
his sky, he would proceed with great facility in the general arrange-
ment of his tints, on the buildings, trees, water, and other objects.
Every colour appeared to be placed with a most judicious perception
to effecting a general union, or harmony. His light stone tints were
put in with thin washes of Roman ochre, the same mixed with light
red and certain spaces free from the warm tints were touched with
grey, composed of light red and indigo, or, brighter still, with
ultramarine and light red. The brick buildings with Roman ochre,
light red and lake, and a mixture of Roman ochre, lake and indigo,
or Roman ochre, madder brown and indigo ; also with burnt sienna
and Roman ochre, madder brown and Roman ochre, and these
colours in all their combinations. For finishing the buildings which
came the nearest to the foreground, where the local colour and 'form
were intended to be represented with particular force and effect,
Vandyck brown and Cologn-earth were combined with these tints,
which gave depth and richness of tones, that raised the scale of
effect without the least diminution of harmony — on the contrary, the
richness of effect was increased from their glowing warmth, by
neutralizing the previous tones, and by throwing them into their
respective distances, or into proper keeping. The trees, which he
frequently introduced in his views, exhibiting all the varieties of
autumnal hues, he coloured with corresponding harmony to the scale
of richness exhibited on his buildings. The greens for these opera-
tions were composed of gambouge, indigo, and burnt sienna, occa-
sionally heightened with yellow lake, brown pink, and gambouge,
these mixed too sometimes with Prussian blue. The shadows for
the trees, with indigo and burnt sienna, and with a most beautiful
harmonious shadow tint, composed of grey and madder brown ;
which, perhaps, is nearer to the general tone of the shadow of trees
than any other combinations that can be formed with water-colours.
Girtin made his greys sometimes with Venetian red and indigo,
Indian red and indigo, and a useful and most harmonious series of
warm and cool greys, of Roman ochre, indigo, and lake, which, used
judiciously, will serve to represent the basis for every species of
subject and effect, as viewed in the middle grounds under the
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 93
influence of that painter's atmosphere so prevalent in the autumnal
season in our humid climate ; which constantly exhibits to the
picturesque eye the charms of rich effects, in a greater variety than
any country in Europe.' ' His palette,' says Girtin's biographer in
the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' ' was covered with a greater variety of
tints than almost any of his contemporaries.'
The Messrs. Redgrave ' declare that Girtin was the first who
followed out a procedure the reverse of that which had hitherto
prevailed — laying in the whole of his work with the true local colour of
the various parts, and afterwards adding the shadows with their own
local and individual tints. But they allege that this was only quite
at the end of his career, and contend that in ' his mode of execution
he did not add much to the resources of art.' They consider that
in 1798 Turner was in advance of Girtin in the employment of
executive processes.
It has further been said that Girtin was the discoverer of the mode
of wiping out lights in water-colour painting ; and that he made the
discovery by an accident. The story is that ' he spilt some drops of
water upon a drawing, and, fearing that it would injure the part upon
which it fell, took his handkerchief carefully to sop it up ; when, the
colour being softened by the moisture, it came away upon the hand-
kerchief, leaving the exact shape of the spots of water white. It
struck him that this plan of getting out lights might be applied in
the progress of a drawing, and he used it with so much success that
for several seasons his works attracted particular attention in this
respect. It was supposed that, instead of being taken out after the
picture was advanced, they were stopped out in the commencement ;
and the colourmen got up a preparation which they sold under the
name of ' Girtin's Stopping-out Mixture.' 2 Such a method has,
indeed, been employed by several artists.
According to Pyne, the process of ' taking out the lights with
bread ' was ' a discovery which originated with Turner,' whose
' magnificent effects, aided by this process, were first exhibited at the
Royal Academy,' when ' all the painters were puzzled to find out by
what art he performed this graphic magic.' 3
Mr. Jenkins contends that ' the best evidence is in favour of
1 Century of Painters, i. 387, 395. 2 J. J. J. ex relatione T. Cafe.
• Somerset House Gazette, \. 193, 194. The writer proceeds to lament that the most brilliant
effects produced in this way are transient, owing to the fugitive nature of the colours used
for glazing.
94 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. u
Turner's being the discoverer of some mode of getting out lights."
He was unable to detect in Girtin's drawings any evidence of his
having adopted the practice. That painter, he says, ' occasionally
used some kind of white, as upon a large drawing of the Interior of
Exeter Cathedral, belonging to Miss Miller, not only upon the
highest lights, but mixed with colour in touches upon the screen.'
But there was a third artist in whose behalf a claim to the
honour of the invention might be put in with perhaps equal plausi-
bility. This was the Yorkshire painter, Francis Nicholson, above
mentioned. Nicholson, like all true masters of our water-colour
school, relied entirely upon transparent pigment for the richness and
strength of his drawings. And Pyne illustrates the fact by the
following anecdote, which he puts into the mouth of an informant,
whom he represents as ' no mean performer himself,' of a visit to the
iarl of Warwick's collection. ' On looking over his portfolios, con-
taining the works of Sandby, Rooker, Cozens, Warwick Smith, and
others of the water-colour school,' says the informant, ' I was struck
with some clever pieces, scenes in Ireland, executed in body-colours
by Walmsley, one of the scene-painters at Covent Garden Theatre.
The subjects were highly picturesque, representing rocks and water-
falls, his Lordship's favourite studies. " What think you of these ? "
says my Lord. " I admire them much, sir," answers the professor.
"The rocks are boldly designed ; but what I most admire is the water,
rolling so turbulently over its rocky bed. There is the advantage of
body-colours, my Lord. You can put on the lights ; now, in trans-
parent water-colours, you must leave the lights ; hence you never can
represent such scenes with clearness, force, and spirit united. There
rests one of the insurmountable difficulties of that species of art, touch-
ing the means for the faithful imitation of nature." "Now, sir," replies
Lord Warwick, " this is what I expected. Every connoisseur, nay
almost every artist, has made the same remarks. But, sir, I will
surprise you ; and that, I trust, most agreeably." His Lordship then
takes from his portfolio two large drawings, scenes in North Wales,
of subjects similar to those of Walmsley 's. " Marvellous ! " exclaims
the critic. "Is it possible? Can these be done in transparent water-
colours?" "Yes, sir." " By whom, my Lord ?" " By Francis Nichol-
son, a provincial artist, living in the neighbourhood of York"." " I
never heard his name, my Lord, till now, but ... he will soon be
dtterre. Such a genius must be one of us. The metropolis is his
CH. I TURNER AND GIRTIN AS STUDENTS AND REFORMERS 95
sphere." '' Nicholson fulfilled the prediction, and was afterwards long
and profitably settled in London among his confreres of the brush.
The suggestive nature of Girtin's drawings, so characteristic of a
true sketch, so different from mere imitation, laid them open to a
charge of incompleteness. Dayes, in a short, unkind paragraph,
written after his pupil's death, declares that they were ' generally too
slight,' though he admits them to be ' the offspring of a strong
imagination.' Pyne tells us 2 that ' Girtin is supposed to have been
tempted to work with less regard to correctness of form, in proportion
to the ease with which he produced richness of colour, on the car-
tridge paper, compared with the labour of executing on white paper,
and to have become at last so enamoured with colouring and effect,
as to consider drawing of little consequence to the general character
of a picture,' which ' slovenly aberrations of genius ' produced a bad
effect upon art through the imitations of admiring dilettanti.
But others who knew him said that he was indefatigable in his
profession, and equally painstaking in the field and in the studio, his
devotion to art being unbounded. When sketching from nature, he
would expose himself to all weathers, sitting out for hours in the
rain to observe the effect of storms and clouds upon the atmosphere.
Death itself was believed to have been hastened by a cold he caught
while painting in the damp air.3 He ' usually,' says the biographer
in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' ' finished the greater part of his drawing
on the spot,' and ' when he had made a sketch at any place, he never
wished to quit it until he had given it all the proper tints.' But one
of his modes of study on the Thames, he being a great lover of river
scenery, was to be carried up and down on a barge, sketching as it
floated along.4 In Miller's Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views
there is a woodcut tailpiece representing Girtin sketching from
nature. He sits upon a three-legged folding-stool in an easy attitude,
his body thrown back and his feet forward. He wears Hessian boots
and a tall beaver hat, and seems to be drawing with a pencil on a bit
of paper folded loosely as one would turn back, in reading it, the
pages of a pamphlet. This paper he holds in his left hand, which
rests upon his knee. The place may be in a park, or by the Thames.
There is at the back a piece of water with a swan upon it.
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 30. * Ibid. i. 83.
* J- J- J. ex relatione Miss Hog and C. Varley.
4 Idem, ex rel. T. C. Girtin.
96 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN liK II
As to his studio work, ' one who had frequently watched his pro-
gress tells us,' say Messrs. Redgrave, ' that his finely coloured composi-
tions were wrought with much study, and proportionate manual
exertion, and that though he did not hesitate, nor undo what he had
once done, for he worked on principle, yet he reiterated his tints to
produce splendour and richness, and repeated his depths to secure
transparency of tones, with surprising perseverance.' ' He is also
said to have destroyed a vast number of drawings ; for if he made a
mistake in any of the tints, he would throw the drawing away.
Glover, it seems, did the same.2 Mr. Jenkins remarks that ' no
greater proof could be advanced of the extreme timidity with which
the early water-colour draftsmen worked. Being unaware of the
modes since adopted of taking out unsatisfactory parts of a drawing,
they considered the whole spoiled if they did not ' hit upon the tints
at once.' This limitation of means may, however, have had the
salutary effect of enforcing reliance on mastery of hand, instead of
inducing dependence on remedial processes.
Besides the employment he received as a teacher, Girtin was
encouraged by the favour of many noble and wealthy patrons, who
not only threw open to him their houses and collections of art
treasures, but gave work to his pencil. To the names already men-
tioned are to be added those of Sir George Beaumont ; Mr. Lascelles,3
who noticed him early and gave him the use of his collection ; the
Hon. Spencer Cowper, ' who had the largest and finest collection of
Girtin's drawings of any gentleman of that day ; ' 4 Lord Hardwicke ;
the Earl of Mulgrave ; General Phipps ; the Earl of Buchan ; and,
most hospitable of all, the Earl of Harewood, who was not only one
of his earlier patrons, giving him the advantage of his society and of
his picture gallery to form his taste by, but who had a room kept for
him at Harewood House, where he lived for long periods together,
and made some of his most important drawings.5
1 Century of Painters, i. 391 ; and see Library of Fine Arts, iii. 318.
2 J. J. J. ex relatione E. Dorrell. 3 Gentleman's Magazine.
* Miller's Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views. s J. J. J. MSS.
CH. I 97
CHAPTER II
GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS
Harris the dealer— Girtin's Sketching Society— Its rules and members — franeta—llis
career — Co/man — As 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' — Old artist quarters — Barker — Panoramas
— Sir K. K. Porter — Battle-pieces — Girtin's view of London — What has become of it?
— Turner takes to oils — Becomes A. R.A.
WHILE in the enjoyment of all this direct patronage, and thus, one
would think, above the necessity of paying his court to the dealers,
it seems curious that Girtin should have been rather inclined to sell
his works through their medium than at once to persons who wished
to possess them. But such is said to have been the fact,1 and that
many of his drawings passed through the hands of one Harris, a
frame-maker of Gerrard Street, Soho, who seems to have found his
interest in gathering around him some of the choice spirits of the
artist fraternity, in whom the Bohemian element was not wanting.
It is quite possible that Girtin, with his sociable nature, may have
enjoyed a chat at ' Jack Harris's tavern club ' even, as alleged, with
' that wild reprobate Morland,' 2 but it is more agreeable to picture
him as the centre of a social reunion of a much more refined descrip-
tion, in which he certainly took part. To him has been assigned the
credit of having been the first to form one of the many pleasant
sketching coteries which have existed among artists and amateurs
from his time to the present. It is not improbable that with him the
idea originated of a sociable evening meeting, once a month or so, of
friends of artistic proclivities, and more or less brothers of the brush,
to indulge their fancy and their taste in a couple of hours' sketching,
illustrating in friendly rivalry a given subject ; and, likely enough, it
was suggested by the recollection of his own profitable evenings in
Adclphi Terrace. There have been larger and more distinguished
societies of the same kind, but we hear of none of earlier date than
1 Redgrave's Century of Painters, i. 399. - Thornbury's Life o) Turner, p. 66.
H
98 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. H
that established by Girtin and his comrades a year or two before the
close of the eighteenth century.
An interesting minute of the first meeting of the society is pre-
served at the South Kensington Museum on the back of a drawing in
the water-colour collection there, entitled ' A landscape composition ;
Moonlight,' on which are inscribed the following words and figures :
' This drawing was made on Monday, May the aoth, 1799, at the room
of Robert Ker Porter of No. 16 Great Newport Street, Leicester
Square, in the very painting room that formerly was Sir Joshua
Reynolds's and since has been Dr. Samuel Johnson's ; and for the
first time on the above day convened, a small and select Society of
Young Painters under the title (as I give it) of the Brothers met
for the purpose of establishing by practice a school of Historic
Landscape, the subjects being original designs from poetick passages ;
Ls. FRANCIA.
' The Society consists of
Worthington,
J. C. Denham, Treaf,
R' Kr Porter,
T8 Girtin,
Ts Underwood,
G° Samuel,
& Ls Francia, Secret1!
The above minute seems to mean that it was Francia, not Girtin,
who actually founded the Society.
This FRANCOIS Louis THOMAS FRANCIA, which appears to be
his full name, though he is generally known as ' Louis Francia '
simply, was one of Girtin's fellow-students at Dr. Monro's. He was
a Frenchman, believed to have been born at Calais in 1772,' and
therefore a little older than Girtin. He is chiefly known in bold,
moving sea-pieces, but he painted on shore also, and with a power,
and an eye for broadly massed composition and mellowness of
1 The usual biographers do not tell us much about ' Louis Francia,' and what little they
have to say is contradictory and not all to his credit. Pilkington, having in a decisive way
placed his birth within the present century, sets him down as Girtin's pupil. Now, whether
we give the year 1800 to this century or to the last (a question much discussed at that era),
Francia could not, on the above theory, have been quite three years old when Girtin died,
and his precocity must have equalled that of the infant in the ' Bab Ballads ' who died ' an
old dotard ' at the age of five. And moreover he was, as we see, secretary to ' the Brothers '
in May 1799. Redgrave, more definitely and with greater plausibility, tells us that he was
born at Calais on 21 Dec., 1772.
CH. II GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS 99
colour, so suggestive of Girtin as to have led to his works being
sometimes attributed to that master himself. Among some manu-
script notes referring to the time we are considering, or a few years
earlier, which were furnished to Mr. Jenkins by J. P. Neale, the
topographic draftsman, who was four years older than Girtin, there
is a casual reference to Francia, as an assistant at a drawing-school
in Furnival's Inn Court, Holborn, kept by one J. C. Barrow, where
John Varley was also employed. The writer describes him as ' a
conceited French refugee, who used to amuse the party with his
blundering absurdities.' In the list of subscribers to 'The Works
of the late Edward Dayes,' Svo, 1805, is 'Lewis Francia, Drawing
Master, 5 Lower Phillimore Place, Kensington.' Graves notes eighty-
five landscapes exhibited by Francia at the Royal Academy between
1795 and 1821. He is also said to have made many drawings for,
and as ' painter in water-colours to,' the Duchess of York. And he
published the following books of prints : ' Studies of Landscapes
imitated from the originals by L. Francia, 1810,' apparently soft-
ground etchings, some designed by himself being excellent sugges-
tions of landscape composition ; and four ' Marine Studies by
L. Francia, 1822.' Published by Rodwell and Martin, New Bond
Street. Price 2s. in 'C. Hullmandel's Lithography,' with a vignette
title. All these are very slight sketches, probably for students to
copy. Francia is further mentioned by Redgrave as ' a member
and for a time secretary of the Water-Colour Society.' But the body
referred to is not the Society whose history these pages are intended
specially to record. It was a rival association of which some account
will be given in the sequel. According to the same biographer this
artist died on the 6th of February 1839, at his native Calais, whither
he had returned in 1817, having failed in the preceding year to gain
admission to the ranks of the Royal Academy.1
Messrs. Worthington and /. C. Denham appear to have been ama-
teurs. The first was probably Mr. Thomas Worthington, described2
1 A notice of Louis Francia, peintre de marine, by E. Le Beau, is contained in the
Mi-moires de la Societt d* Agriculture de Calais, and was printed separately. There have
been other artists of the same name (besides the old master Francesco Raibolini, of Bologna).
A son of Louis Francia's exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy ; and there was a ' Belgian
marine painter' of the name of Francia, whose death in September 1884 has been recorded.
1 By Chambers Hall in a letter to John Pye. He is called W. H. Worthington by
Thornbury. There was an engraver and draftsman of that name and those initials but if
not born (as Redgrave says) till about 1795, he could not be the man.
H 2
ioo LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. H
as 'a very skilful performer' with the brush, who 'had profited much
by ' lessons which he for some time received from Girtin. He lived
at Halliford on the Thames, and had a collection of that painter's
drawings.
Robert Ker Porter was a rising artist a few years younger than
Girtin, addicted to the big brush, who had already composed 'historical '
pictures of ambitious magnitude.
Tliomas Underwood1 seems to have been a half amateur water-
colour painter who studied at Dr. Monro's, and George Samuel an
esteemed landscape painter, chiefly in water-colours, who exhibited
at the Academy from 1786 to 1823, and had made a hit by a view of
the frozen Thames in 1789.
The following were the ways of this little club, which forms the
model on which the simple rules of later sketching societies have
usually been framed. They met alternately at each other's houses.
The subject was generally taken from an English poet, and was
treated by each in his own way. The member at whose house they
met supplied strained paper, colours, and pencils, and all the sketches
of the evening became his property. They met at six o'clock and had
tea or coffee, worked till ten, and, after a plain supper, separated at
midnight.2
Thornbury tells us that the members were ten in number, adding
to the seven names recorded by Francia, three more, which, if cor-
rectly given, would be Augustus Wall Callcott, P. S. Murray, and
John Sell Cotrnan? Callcott, like Ker Porter, was afterwards knighted,
when he became a distinguished painter and a Royal Academician.
Like him also, he had seen a few less summers than Thomas Girtin.
At this time young Callcott was gradually deserting the sister art of
music to try his hand at portraiture, his true bent of landscape not
having yet declared itself. It is more than possible that his evening
amusement in Tom Girtin's genial company had something to do
1 Probably the ' R. T. Underwood ' mentioned in Redgrave's Dictionary. Thornbury
calls him ' S. R. Underwood.' There is a plate of ' Roche Rocks and Chapel, Cornwall,'
by 'J. R. Underwood,' in Beauties of England and Wales, ii. 517, dated 1802. In Dr.
Percy's Sale Catalogue he is 'T. R. Underwood.'
2 Thornbury's Life of Turner, 66 ; Library of the Fine Arts, iii. 316.
* In the late Dr. Percy's collection of drawings, sold at Christie's in April 1890, was a
set of seven of the subject, An Ancient Castle, by Callcott, Cotman, Girtin, Murray, Porter,
Samuel, and Underwood. It is said that Turner refused to join the society because the hnst
was allowed to have the drawings for his own. (See ' Thomas Girtin,' by F. G. Kitton, in
the Art Journal for Nov. 1887.)
CH. II GIRTIN AND HrS COMPANIONS lot
with its recognition. Murray was, it is believed, one more amateur
But the third additional name demands a fuller notice. He was
another of Dr. Monro's clients, and one of the many who became dis-
tinguished as a professional artist in after life.
JOHN SELL COTMAN was also Girtin's junior, and must have
been one of the youngest members of the sketching club. In a yet
distant chapter he will have to be dealt with as an Associate of the
Water-Colour Society. At the time now referred to, he was a strug-
gling student, who had just shaken himself free of the paternal draper's
shop life at Norwich, under an artistic impulse not to be controlled.
Some of his early adventures in London, while trying to live by
his pencil, have been recorded, doubtless with some embellishment,
by a once well-known pen. Ker Porter used, not unfrequently, to
bring his sister Jane to the meetings of the sketching club, whereat
she was sometimes permitted to select themes for the evening's draw-
ings.1 It is said that Cotman related to her these incidents of his life,
and that she afterwards embodied them in that of the hero of her first
romance, Thaddeus of Warsaw, published in i8o3-2 There she re-
lates how Thaddeus (an imaginary descendant of Sobieski, whose
character she based on that of Kosciuszko 3), being an exile in England
after the subjugation of Poland, and finding himself penniless, had
recourse to drawing in order to raise the needful. For ' Thaddeus of
Warsaw ' read ' Cotman of Norwich,' and the story is his, though the
aristocratic traits of character introduced are far from being appro-
priate. ' He found,' writes the novelist, ' that his sole dependence
must rest on his talents for painting. Of this art he had always been
remarkably fond ; and his taste easily perceived that there were many
drawings exhibited for sale much inferior to those which he had
executed for mere amusement. He decided at once ; and purchasing
. . . pencils and Indian ink, he set to work.' With these materials
he executes half a dozen drawings, ' recollections of scenes in Ger-
many,' and takes them to a print-shop in Great Newport Street/
where a dealer, declaring such things to be mere drugs, offers him
1 Thornbury's Life of Turner, 68. 2 J. J. J. MSS. ex relatione Mr. J. B. Tootal.
3 Thaddeus Kosciuszko lived in what had been Hogarth's house, the south-east corner of
Leicester Square, where Archbishop Tenison's school now stands. (Hare's Walks in
London, ii. 127.)
' Henry Richter, who was born in Great Newport Street in 1772, told Mr. Jenkins that,
in his early days, this was the only street in London in which there was a prinUeller's.
loz LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN UK. n
a guinea for the six, but so offends his dignity by calling him a ' con-
ceited dauber,' that he walks off in high dudgeon with the roll of
drawings under his arm. Reduced to greater necessity, he afterwards
goes again to the same street, and offers the drawings for a guinea at
another shop there, where a more conscientious dealer not only buys
them at once, but requests him to furnish six more every week. How
much of the experiences of the imaginary Count Sobieski are to be
placed to the credit of this excellent painter of the Norwich school, it
is impossible to say, but there is at any rate some historic reality in
the scene wherein the authoress lays this portion of her plot. Her
pages take us back to the little artists' quarter about Leicester Square
and Covent Garden, as it existed in the days of her own young-lady-
hood, where the Porters and Girtin and many of their painter friends
lived during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
It is still possible to trace some of their familiar haunts ; but the
district has been carved up for wider streets ; old sites are overlaid
with model lodging houses, new theatres and music-halls, bigger
shops, art galleries, and co-operative stores ; and its former outlines
are almost blotted out. Even the name ' Trafalgar Square ' would
have had no meaning in the days here spoken of. The year 1794,
during the hard winter whereof Miss Porter brings her noble refugee
to the Hummums in Covent Garden, was known in naval annals by
an earlier triumph than Nelson's, that of Admiral Lord Howe, on its
' glorious First of June.' ' St. Martin's noble church,' she says, ' was
then the centre of the east side of a long, narrow, and somewhat dirty
lane of mean houses, particularly in the end below the church.
Charing Cross with its adjoining streets showed nothing better than
plain tradesmen's shops ; and it was not until we saw the Admiralty
and entered the Horse Guards that anything presented itself worthy
of the great name of London.' '
In 1798 Girtin was living, as before stated, at 25 Henrietta Street,
Covent Garden. Close by, on the south, between that street and
Maiden Lane, lay Hand Court, where Turner lurked within his
modest studio. Porter had removed from Bedford Street (No. 38),
where he was in 1794, just round the corner westward, to 16 Newport
Street, the very street in which Cotman (or Count Sobieski)
found the first market for his drawings. It is a dirty little back street
now (if indeed it exists at all), nearly lost among new buildings, but
1 Thaddeus of Warsaw, edit. 1831, p. no«.
CH. II GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS 103
at that time it formed part of the nearest coachway from Lincoln's
Inn to Piccadilly. Somewhat further on is Lisle Street, where, at the
large house fronting Leicester Street, Leicester Square, had been
exhibited, in 1781, the Eidophusikon of Loutherbourg ; and to the
north whereof is Gerrard Street, haunted with the shades of Jack
Harris and the literary and artistic frequenters of the old ' Turk's
Head.' The Cranbourn Street (or ' Alley ') where Hogarth served
his apprenticeship to a silversmith's engraver, had not yet, nor long
after, given place to the thoroughfare which now bears that name ;
and Garrick Street is of still more recent date. The direct communica-
tion between Covent Garden and Leicester Square was by footways
through a labyrinth of paved courts, some of which still exist. West-
ward of, and not quite in a line with Great Newport Street, lies (or
lay) Little Newport Street ; and there, at No. I, resided at one time
(possibly at this) our painter's younger brother John, who carried on
business as a letter and heraldic engraver, and was employed in that
capacity as assistant at the Bank of England. From the point of
junction of the two Newport Streets, there still runs, or very lately
ran, northward, a small street called Porter Street (whether named or
not from the family above mentioned, this deponent cannot say), and
southward, parallel to St. Martin's Lane, and between it and Leicester
Square, one out of many streets in central London called Castle
Street. Formerly it extended to Charing Cross, but it is now cur-
tailed by the National Gallery.1 On the west side of Castle Street
lived John Hunter, the great comparative anatomist ; and nearly
opposite, at No. 28, another of the little circle of artist friends in
which Tom Girtin moved.
This was HENRY ASTON BARKER, a painter without mention of
whose name and life's work no complete account can be given of the
development of that topographic art upon which our water-colour
school was originally based, and which in the days of its earlier
maturity still constituted its main support. His father, Robert
Barker, has the credit of inventing, as well as founding, in 1793, the
popular exhibition in the north-east corner of Leicester Square, well
remembered as one of the delights of their youth by elders of the
living generation, under the name of ' the Panorama.'
Since this paragraph was written, Porter Street, even Castle Street itself, and nearly
all that it inherited, have dissolved, to make room for Charing Cross Road.
104 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
The succession of these wondrous cylindric views, in the centre
whereof the spectator stood, as one transported, by a genius of Araby,
into some distant land, or seemed encompassed by the reality of a
scene which he had already striven in vain to visualize in his mind's
eye, was for a long series of years an equal source of pleasure and
profitable instruction to countless persons of all ages.
Although, as already mentioned, the idea of a continuous picture,
including the whole circle of the horizon, is said to have occurred to
Sir George Beaumont when he saw Barret's wall-decorations at
Norbury Park, and to have even been put by him to an experimental
test, it was to Robert Barker, who conceived a similar idea indepen-
dently, that the public were eventually indebted for this interesting kind
of exhibition. But his younger son, Henry Aston Barker, was his
principal assistant in the execution of the scheme. It was he who
went out sketching, at home and abroad, and virtually he who
designed all the earlier panoramic views.
Young Barker was not more than a year older than Girtin. He had
come to London from Scotland in or shortly before 1789, with his
father (an Irishman of county Meath), and they brought with them a
view, representing Edinburgh from Calton Hill, with Holyrood House
in the foreground. It had already been exhibited in that city and in
Glasgow, and had excited much interest as a proof that it was
possible to depict a portion of a scene embracing more than sixty
degrees of the horizon. It was not, indeed, a complete panorama in
the true sense of the word, for it included no more than one-half of
the entire circle ; but all the difficulties of perspective had been sur-
mounted. The sketches for this picture had been made by Henry
Aston Barker, then a lad of about fourteen ; and his father, who
had invented a mechanical system of perspective, and taught that
art in Edinburgh, had pieced the sketches together and adapted
them to a concave surface. Mr. Barker met with liberal encourage-
ment from a Scotch nobleman (believed to have been Lord Elcho,
son of the Earl of Wemyss), and, on coming to London, was
thereby enabled to exhibit this picture in a large room at No. 28
Haymarket.
He placed his son Henry in the schools of the Royal Academy,
where he and Turner and Robert Ker Porter ' are said to have been
1 See an account of ' Bob Porter ' in the schools, insisting on adding a helmet and sword
to the Gladiator (Somerset House Gazette, \. 364).
CH. II GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS 105
'great companions and confederates in boyish mischief.' Henry
Barker is moreover reported to have had a boyish attachment to his
friend Porter's lively and romantic sister, Miss Jane, the authoress
above quoted. But Barker was also fond of work. He was an early
riser like Turner, and used to emulate the industry of John Hunter,1
over the way, in Castle Street. Get up, however, as early as he
would, there the first thing he always saw was the great anatomist,
poring over his preparations.
The success of their ' Edinburgh ' induced the Barkers to execute
another painting of the kind in London, and this time to creep round
another quarter of the circle. For this, Henry Barker made a number
of drawings 2 from the top of the Albion Mills, a lofty structure at the
eastern corner of the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge.3 When
finished, this three-quarter circle picture was exhibited in 1792, in a
rough building, apparently not erected for the purpose, at the back of
Barker's house in Castle Street, and 'abutting on the Apollonicon
Rooms ' in St. Martin's Lane. Sir Joshua Reynolds went to see the
picture there, and praised it highly.4 It only remained to complete
the whole circumference of the horizon ; but for that it was necessary
to have a cylindrical room specially adapted to the purpose. This
was effected in the following year, when the house in Leicester Square,
with its two circles (to which a third was added long afterwards), was
erected by subscription, from the designs of Robert Mitchell, of
Newman Street,5 and opened, by Robert Barker, under the name,
then first adopted, of ITANnPAMA. The pictures of Edinburgh
and London had been executed in distemper ; but the paintings here
were in oil. On the death of his father, in 1806, Henry Barker carried
on the concern. He afterwards went to live in West Square, St
George's Fields, Southwark, where he painted his panorama pictures
in a wooden rotunda. He also travelled much about the world,
making sketches for them. He died in i856.6
1 John Hunter's house in Leicester Square, where he first began, in 1785, to collect his
museum, was next to the Alhambra, to the south, between it and Hogarth's. (Hare's Walk
in London, ii. 127.) The back may have looked upon Castle Street.
- These drawings were at the same time etched by H. A. Barker, the shading was
coarsely aquatinted by F. Birnie, and the whole were published in six sheets, about 22
inches by 17. They are dated 1792 and 1793.
3 Somerset House Gazette, ii. 152.
4 J. J. J. ex relatione J. Mascy Wright.
5 He published an account, with delineations of the building, in 1800.
8 For many of the above facts see obituary notice of II. A. Barker in the Gentleman'}
Magazine.
106 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN EK. n
These comprehensive landscapes of their friend Barker's seem to
have raised in the hearts both of Porter and Girtin a desire to execute
works of a similar kind. The former, some years later, applied the
plan to ' historical ' painting, and exhibited at the Lyceum l three
large battle-pieces, the first (in 1799) representing the storming of
Scringapatam, which was followed by the siege of Acre, and (in 1801)
the battle of Alexandria. These were carried round three quarters
of the circle. Another was the battle of Agincourt.
Battle-pieces have always been favourite subjects with the painters
of panoramas. Barker's invention was introduced into Paris, where
a panorama, in a building erected by the American engineer Robert
Fulton (the inventor of the steamboat) was opened in 1779 with a
view of the Place de la Concorde. Other views of the kind having
proved very attractive in that city, the Emperor Napoleon attempted,
as a means of making himself popular, to establish panoramas in
every quarter, exhibiting the victories of the French armies, and he
' gave orders to his architect, Cellerier, to draw out the plans of seven
panoramas to be erected in the then open space now filled up by
the Palais de 1'Industrie, but the military events of 1812 turned his
attention from the design.'2 Even Barker's panorama in Leicester
Square opened with a view of the ' Grand Fleet at Spithead.' This
kind of exhibition has been revived in recent years in Paris and in
London, and the pictures have again been in most cases representa-
tions of scenes in modern warfare, a noteworthy exception being that
of Niagara, now exhibiting at Westminster, which gives an adequate
idea of what the old cylindrical pictures were.
Girtin's so-called ' panorama ' was of the peaceful order. It was
one of ' London,' said to have been painted in his twenty-third year,3
that is, in 1797-8, and so nearly the same in subject and other circum-
stances as Barker's, that much confusion has arisen between them.
Like his, it was taken from the Surrey side of the river and the foot
of Blackfriars Bridge, from the top either of the Albion Mills, or
(according to another account) 4 Sir Ashton Leaver's Museum. Its
horizon is said to have been semicircular. We are not told what its
1 The Lyceum was a great exhibition room in the Strand, where the theatre of that name
now stands. It was originally built for the accommodation of the Incorporated Society of
Artists, which removed thither from Spring Gardens in 1773. See below.
1 Galignanfs Messenger, 13 September, 1881.
3 Redgrave's Century of Painters, 399.
4 John Pye's MSS.
CH. It GIRTIN AND HIS COMPANIONS 107
size was. It must, however, have had a very real look, and have
contained figures ; for a writer in Notes and Queries l says of it : 'I
remember when a boy going to see that panorama. I was struck
with the baker knocking at the door in Albion Place, and wondered
the man did not move.1 In one of these views of London (it is not
clear whether Girtin's or Barker's) there was represented on the Thames
the Lord Mayor's procession by water to Westminster, which used
then to take place on the gth of November. As there is no such
incident in Barker and Birnie's prints, though boats are there intro-
duced on the river, the probability is that it was Girtin who made a
feature of the City barges.
Girtin's ' London ' was exhibited in Spring Gardens, and on view
there at the time of his death.2 After that event it appears to have
lain rolled up in a loft over a carpenter's shop in St. Martin's Lane
(Thornbury says, at an architect's named Howitt), and 'about the
year 1825' to have been sold by the second husband3 of Girtin's
widow, one Mr. Cohen, to ' some persons in Russia,' or to ' a Russian
nobleman,' who carried it off to that country. According to one
statement,4 it was exhibited in St. Petersburg. The picture itself may
turn up again, some fine day ; but in the mean time there are materials
from which a fair conjecture may be made as to what it is, or was,
like. The outline of the work is 5 in the possession of Miss Miller ;
and several of the original studies for it, ' very admirably drawn and
painted,' 6 are in the collection of Girtin's drawings formed by the late
Mr. Chambers Hall, and now in the British Museum.
It has been stated that Girtin's ' panorama ' was executed in oil.
But an examination of these studies, when in Mr. Hall's possession,
led Mr. Jenkins to doubt the correctness of this assertion. They are,
he writes, 'splashed with colour, which Mr. Hall stated to be dis-
temper. They have all the appearance of having been soiled while
being used in the progress of painting the panorama. This circum-
stance ' he regards as throwing ' some doubt upon ' the above
statement, ' and taken in conjunction with the fact that Girtin painted
some scenes for a pantomime at Covent Garden and consequently
1 First series, vol. iv. p. 21. * Obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine.
' ]. J. J. MSS. ex relatione Miss Hog. * Pye's MSS.
5 Or was. See Catalogue of the Girtin Exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club,
'875 (page 7 «). to which collection Miss Miller contributed many fine drawings of the
master's.
6 I- J. J-
108 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
must have been acquainted with the use of distemper' leads him to
consider it ' probable that the panorama was also executed in that
material,' the quality of which is, in that writer's opinion, ' so much
better suited for the purpose than the glare of oil.'
Girtin did, it is true, at the latter end of his life, paint a few, but
very few, pictures in oil, besides the doubtful panorama. His son
told Mr. Jenkins that there were only two, and Miss Hog, an intimate
friend of the painter's wife, further said that two large views by him
of Harewood House were in oil. But the last picture he exhibited,
namely ' Bolton Bridge, Yorkshire,' at the Royal Academy in 1801,
was in that medium. It was much noticed at the time,1 and is
mentioned in Mr. Redford's List of Art Sales, as having been sold
in 1803, for 257. 4s. It is possible, as has been alleged, that Girtin
painted these oil-pictures with a view of gaining admission to the
Royal Academy, where the claims of water-colour draftsmen to be
regarded as ' painters ' were not recognized.
His early companion and fellow-student, Turner, though still
supporting himself by making topographic drawings, and at the
same time continuing to develop the resources of water-colour art, had
for some years past been exhibiting oil-pictures as the means by
which he hoped to achieve fame as a great artist This ambition was
doomed to be for a long time bitterly disappointed ; but he at least
obtained by them his admission to the Academy, as an Associate, in
1 799 ; in which year he set up his studio in a more genteel quarter,
at 64 Harley Street, and left for ever the old historic neighbourhood
about Covent Garden.
1 Gentleman's Magazine.
CH. HI 109
CHAPTER III
THE LAST YEARS OF GIRTIN
Girtin's marriage —Moves to St. George's Row — Studio frequented — Playful letters— Fatal
illness — Goes to France— His Paris sketches — Etched and aquatinted — Originals at
Woburn — Pantomime scenes — Barker in Paris— Girtin's death and burial— His private
character — Aspersed by Dayes — Defended by family — Contrasted with Turner's.
THE time was near at hand for Girtin, too, to make a westward
move. On the i6th of October, 1800, he took to himself a wife. His
bride was Miss Mary Ann Borrett, only daughter of Phineas Borrctt,
an eminent goldsmith of good property, and a liveryman of the
Goldsmiths' Company, who resided at No. 1 1 Scott's Place, Islington.
They were married by license at the church of St. George's, Hanover
Square. The entry in the parish register states that the bride was a
minor, and that the marriage was ' with consent of her father,' who
together with ' Ann Borrett ' sign their names as witnesses of the
ceremony. The ' happy pair ' went to reside at St. George's Row,1
only a few doors from old Paul Sandby's.
That veteran painter was now about seventy-five. During the whole
of Girtin's life he had been living there ; and there he was to live on
until seven years after Girtin's death, when he died also. He had a
studio at the back, abutting on the burial ground behind, where his
body is interred.2 But the day of Sandby's art was at length gone
by. There was a greater attraction than any he could now offer, in
the sight of our lively and dashing young painter at his work in the
studio close at hand. Girtin's house was the resort of many persons
of distinction in society, and all who came were shown up into the
painting-room. Here, surrounded by callers, the artist would go on
1 At No. 2, or according to Pye ' No. 9.' (MSS.)
2 There was exhibited at the Nottingham Museum in 1884 a view by Sandby of the
cemetery in which his studio appears. A bistre drawing by Girtin of St. George's Row,
formerly in Dr. Percy's collection, is now at the British Museum. The house with a shade
over the window was Sandby's. (Percy Catalogue.)
no LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN P,K. n
with his work, chatting and telling anecdotes at the same time ;
liberal, as on all occasions, of his knowledge of art. Lady Gowcr,
and doubtless Lady Long, were frequent visitors. The young man's
father-in-law, with a closer eye than his to business, was inclined to
complain of the professional imprudence of permitting artists so
frequently to see him paint But Girtin's art was not of the kind that
is fabricated in studios.
He still made long visits to the country, and spent much of his
time at Lord Essex's and Lord Harewood's. During absence from
home he used to write pretty and playful letters to his wife and her
mother, often in an easy kind of verse, and very witty and amusing.
He put scraps of poetry, too, under his drawings. These letters his
widow unfortunately destroyed, burning them by mistake, with a box
of others, at the time of her second marriage.
All this happy life was soon, however, to come to an end ; for a
fatal illness, which terminated Girtin's short career, had begun to
develop rapidly. Whether or not he was, as it has been reported,
afflicted with asthma or consumption, the disease which finally caused
his death is believed to have been ossification of the heart. His
health had visibly been failing since the year before his marriage ;
and in 1801 his condition became so alarming that a change of
climate was deemed necessary. Lord Harewood, writing to him on
the 2/th of June, about some drawings which he had been making of
Harewood, says : ' I received your letter this morning, and am sorry
to hear that you are under the necessity of going to another climate
for the benefit of your health.' He was advised to try the Cape of
Good Hope or Madeira ; but his illness gaining upon him, many of
his friends persuaded him not to go so far away, and he went no
farther than Paris.
For this an opportunity now offered itself. The preliminaries of
the Peace of Amiens were signed on the ist of October, 1801, and
that occasion of a visit to the Continent, which had been closed during
the time of war, was embraced by him, as it was by so many of his
countrymen. At first, however, it required considerable interest to
be allowed to go to Paris, particularly in the case of English artists.
This was exerted on Girtin's behalf by one of his numerous friends
and patrons, the above-mentioned Sir Charles Long, who was at
that time Under Secretary of State.
The following letter, however, dated 'October I7th, iSoi,' seems
CH. ill THE LAST YEARS OF GIRTIN in
to show that he did not even then contemplate leaving England :
' To Mr. Harrison at Aid" Boydells. Friend Harrison, — I am so
very ill that I am advised to go into the country for a little while. I
shall desire a person to call upon you if in case you should have
occasion for anything who will attend to my business during my
absence. If you will have the goodness to send what orders you
may want to my mother Mrs. Vaughan,1 Duke Street, Little Britain,
she will take care to let the person know. I'm sorry to hear you
have been ill. I hope your better. Yours respectfully,
(T. GIRTIN.
'Drury Lane 56. '2
Girtin went to Paris in November of the same year, 1801, his
brother John, it is said, lending him ioo/. for the purpose. There
was inducement enough to visit the French capital at this time,
without the excuse of ill health. He derived, indeed, no bodily
benefit from the change ; on the contrary, he was found to be much
worse when he returned home. While in Paris, however, as well as
in one or two of the towns he passed through,3 ' he executed a large
number of sketches, which for boldness betokened no decay of
power,' and are reckoned as in some respects his best works. For
convenience, and possibly in prudence also, as the Parisians were said
to be jealous of sketching, particularly by foreigners, he took all the
views which he made during his residence in Paris, from the windows
of a carriage which he engaged for his daily drives. In this fashion
' he recorded,' says Pye, ' in a number of sketches the first impressions
of his mind on seeing the great features of that remarkable city.' 4
But he found himself lonely and solitary in Paris ; and no wonder.
He had had to go alone, for his young wife was within a month of
her confinement. She went to stay with her parents at Islington, and
their child was born on the loth of December, during the father's
absence abroad. His health still declining, Girtin returned to
England in May 1802. He had then but six months to live; and
1 Oirtin's mother had married a Mr. Vaughan, a pattern-drawer. Miller, in Turner and
Girtiifs Picturesque Views, assuming that the marriage took place shortly after her first
husband's death, conjectures that both Girtin and Turner derived from this stepfather their
introduction to art. Possibly this was the Thomas Vaughan mentioned by Ottley, in his
supplement to Bryan, p. 149, as residing in Spitalfields, and the master of Robert Seymour
the caricaturist.
2 From an autograph lately in the collection of Mr. W. V. Morten.
1 Miller's Turner and Girtiifs Picturesque Views.
* Notes on Turner's ' Liber Studiorum,' p. 47 «.
ii2 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN UK. n
these he employed in making for Lord Essex a scries of drawings
from his Paris sketches, and putting the subjects into a form suitable
for reproduction through the press.
The views were drawn in outline, and etched on soft ground by
Girtin himself. A set of impressions were taken from the plates, and
upon these he put in the effects in colour, and so converted them into
the drawings for the aquatint engravers. The drawings, twenty in
number, were purchased from the artist by the Earl of Essex, and
were in that nobleman's possession when the work was published.
His Lordship afterwards presented them to the Duke of Bedford.1
Besides so preparing this selection of his sketches for publication, the
artist painted two of them on a large scale as scenes for Covcnt
Garden Theatre. One was a view of the Conciergerie for a panto-
mime by Thomas Dibdin (writer of the celebrated ' Mother Goose,
of Grimaldi's palmy days), and the other was the Rue St. Denis.2
During the Peace of Amiens, Henry Barker also went to Paris, and
drew a panorama of that city. It is remarkable that the two artists
should thus for a second time have been engaged in tasks so similar.
Poor Girtin never went back with his wife to their bright dwelling
in Hyde Park. During this last sad period of his life they resided at
her father's house in Islington ; and he had painting-rooms at one
Norman's, a frame-maker's in the Strand, where he worked on till the
pencil literally dropped from his weakened grasp. There was still an
1 Mr. Jenkins, in a note dated 5 November, 1853, states that he saw these drawings in
the hands of Mr. John Pye, the engraver, who was writing a little account of Girtin to append
to the work, and adds : 'They are exquisitely drawn and tinted, and the gradations which
give space admirably managed.' In an earlier memorandum, dated n January, 1852, he
relates that Mr. Pye, some time before, when going over the Library of Woburn Abbey,
with the librarian, Mr. John Martin, discovered these same drawings there, they having
previously been supposed by the custodian to be coloured prints. He also states that Mr.
Pye 'copied some of these drawings and consequently became well acquainted with them.'
Mr. Pye is not known to have completed this promised account of Girtin. The manuscript
notes by him respecting that painter, which have occasionally been cited in these pages,
appear to have been made with a view to a more comprehensive work projected by him, but
left quite in embryo, on the history of painting in Great Britain, and the influence thereon
of Turner as well as Girtin.
2 The Kuf St. Denis is one of the most effective in the engraved series. The street
leading to the arch is filled with carts and foot-passengers, and wonderfully conveys the air
of a bustling metropolitan thoroughfare. There was in the collection of Archdeacon Burney,
and afterwards in that of Dr. Percy, a fine coloured drawing by Girtin of the same subject
(measuring 15! by igf inches), in which the houses are carried up much higher, and there
are no figures or carts. It looks like a sketch made on the spot, and it may have been
used for the scene at Covent Garden. It was bought at the Percy sale, 17 April, 1890, by
Messrs. Colnaghi & Co., for twenty-three guineas. Another fine view of the arch, taken in
flank, is in the South Kensington National Collection.
CH. ui THE LAST YEARS OF GIRTIN 113
idea of sending him abroad, in the vain hope of restoring his health ;
as appears from the following letter from Sir George Beaumont,
referring apparently to the projected publication of the Paris views :
' Dear Sir, — I have just received your letter at this place. The
pleasure I feel at your successful labours is much alloyed by the in-
different account you give of your health. You must take care of
yourself, and I hope you will be enabled so to settle your concerns
that you may pass the winter in Madeira. You will there find ample
materials for your pencil, and the air is the most salubrious, in the
world. I have no doubt but you will secure good impressions for
me ; and if you will send me a line to let me know you receive this,
I will return you a note for the money. If you write by the return
of the post, I shall receive it here, otherwise direct to me at W. Aston,
Woodstock. Lady Beaumont joins with me in best wishes for your
success, and the return of your health. — I am, dear Sir, your sincere
well wisher, G. W. BEAUMONT. — Cheltenham, Octr. 25th, 1802, or at
Oldfield Bowles, Esqre., W. Aston, Woodstock.'
But Girtin had set out on a longer journey. He could not wait
to select artists' proofs for his friend and patron. A fortnight after,
when his wife was with him one night in the studio, he died. It was
the gth of November, Lord Mayor's day. The crowd, that had come
out to view the City pageant, swept by under the now darkened
window ; and admiring visitors to the show-room in Spring Gardens
had to be told next day that the hand which made that pageant live
again in the view they had come to gaze on, would wield a brush
no more.
The loss which had been sustained by Girtin's death was testified
by a group of patrons and admirers who followed his remains to the
grave. Among them were the artists Sir William Becchey, Sir George
Beaumont, Hearne, Edridge, and Turner. He was buried in the old
familiar quarter ; in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, on
the south side of the burial ground to the left of the paved path to
Bedford Street. In 1803 — by whom it is not known, some say by
Turner— a neat monumental stone was erected there, with the inscrip-
tion, ' Sacred to the memory of Thomas Girtin, Artist, who departed
this life Nov. the gth, 1802, aged 27 years.' It is gone now, and Miller '
says that the grave, 'just beyond the second tree,' is marked by 'a
flat stone, which bears neither name nor date.' But he prints a
1 Turner ami Girtin's Picturesque Views, p. xliv.
I
114 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN JSK. n
woodcut of a stone fragment, with an urn and festoons upon it
carved over the above words. ' This,' he says, ' was once propped up
near the grave.' It looks like part of an upright headstone, and its
design does not seem to support his theory that it originally lay, like
the present stone, flat upon the ground.
It is just to add a few words respecting Girtin's private character,
on which some cruel aspersions were cast in a short notice of him
written by his jealous master, Edward Dayes, and published in 1805
in a posthumous series of Professional Sketches of Modern Artists, which
the author had left in manuscript. They have been repeated by other
. writers1 on, apparently, no better foundation. After duly warning
young persons not to ' suffer their passions to overpower their reason '
so as to 'destroy existence,' and ending his moral reflections with the
back-handed compliment to his too clever pupil, ' Had he not trifled
away a vigorous constitution he might have arrived at a very high
degree of excellence as a landscape painter,' poor Dayes, with the
irony of fate, laid violent hands on himself, and put an end to his
own life.
Inferences to support this charge of intemperance, and that
Girtin's death was hastened by excess, have been drawn from his
associating with George Morland. Assuming it to be true, however,
as stated, that these two painters once made a voyage together in a
collier, and that Girtin supped not unfrequently with Harris the
dealer, where Morland supped also, it is not a necessary deduction
that he was a partaker of Morland's vices. They were not ' boys
together ;' for Morland was twelve years older than Girtin. That
Girtin appreciated Morland's genius may indeed be inferred from an
anecdote related by Dawe, who tells us2 that a print of the latter
artist's ' Mail Coach in a Storm ' was 'highly admired by Girtin, who,
having been requested to make a companion to it, after studying it
for some time, threw down his pencil, exclaiming that he could do
nothing like it.' 3 But neither of Morland's biographers, Dawe or
Collins, even mentions a companionship between them. The acquaint-
ance may possibly have been made through John Raphael Smith
(older still by another eleven years), under whom, as we know, Girtin
1 See Somerset House Gazette, \. 66, 82 ; Library of the Fine Arts, iii. 315, 319 ; &c.
* Life of Morland, 200 n.
' Mr. Henderson had a copy by Girtin after a picture of Morland's called ' Dogs hesi-
tating about the Pluck,' whirh copy, as usual, was impressed with his own originality. See
Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue, 1875, No. 127 (Girtin Exhibition).
CH. ill THE LAST YEARS OF GIRTIN 115
used to colour prints. Smith was a sporting buck, but a kind and
generous man notwithstanding. The ' Morland Gallery ' was one of
his best speculations.
The alleged dissipation was wholly denied by Girtin's family and
their friends, and their story of the sea voyage bears a purely inno-
cent aspect. It was that Girtin once made an excursion to Scotland
in company with George Morland, that they performed their passage
by sea, and, in order to observe character and sketch the sailors, took
up their position in the men's cabin. This love of the picturesque
was converted by the detractors of Thomas Girtin into a love of low
society and intemperate habits; and the fact of Morland's having
been his companion may have tended to confirm the impression.
His family indeed represented him as being far more abstemious '
than most young men of his day, and even asserted that he was a
water-drinker. As to social inclination, they attributed to him an
acquired relish for the refined society which he had enjoyed in the
company of his noble patrons, which led him to declare, ' with a
touch of affectation,' says Mr. Jenkins, ' excusable in so young a man,1
that he had a dislike for all other society.2 John Pye writes, that
Girtin's wife was ' extremely angry ' at the report of his being fond of
low company, as he ' disliked it exceedingly, and was on the contrary
too fond of refined society to enjoy that of the illiterate and vulgar.
He lived so much with his superiors in rank and station that, she
says, it gave him a distaste for the middle classes, who were not at
that time so well educated as of later years. But he never slighted
old companions and friends.'
Point has been given to the story of Girtin's intemperance and
dissipation by drawing a contrast with the career of Turner,3 and
a moral lesson has been derived from the allegation that Girtin
shortened his days by a loose course of living, while Turner prolonged
his life by better regulated habits. But such evidence as there is rather
points to the conclusion that Girtin was temperate, married respect-
ably, and died (of heart disease) universally beloved ; and that Turner,
though he lived to be an old man, was not averse to low society,
being himself unpolished and illiterate, and rather fond of tippling,
1 ' My father was almost ascetically temperate, and his taste always inclined to the
refined and elegant.' (Girtin's son, quoted by Thornbury in Life of Turner, second edition,
p. 61.)
2 Miss Hog to Mr. Jenkins.
J See Hayes's account of Turner in his Professional Sketches.
\ 2
ii6 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. H
and that he died in churlish seclusion, attended only by one of his
mistresses, a woman of no cultivation, but the sole intimate friend he
cared to have about him.
'Generous and giddy' are the epithets more fairly applied by
Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcott) to his ' early acquaintance, Tom Girtin.'
He was considered by all who knew him, to be a most delightful
companion, and was generous and noble-minded even to a fault,1
' with little consciousness,' says Leslie,2 ' of his own great merit.'
John Pye, to whom it was always a strong recommendation to be a
good man of business, writes of him that his principal failing was
' great carelessness in money matters. When he had money he could
not keep it if any one wanted it.' Mrs. Borrett said ' she one day
heard a poor artist telling him a tale of misery, and Girtin, having no
money at the time, gave him a beautiful drawing for which he had
refused twenty guineas.' She and her husband ' always spoke of him
as one of the kindest and best of men.' 3
1 J. J. J. * Handbook for Young Painters, 266. • Pye's MSS.
CH. IV II?
CHAPTER IV
GIRTIN AND. TURNER AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
Girtin's relations — Publication of the Paris views — Fire at John Girtin's — Chambers Hall
and Mr. Jackson— Gifts of Girtin drawings to the British Museum — Turner and Girtin's
prices — Turner's 'Norham' — Rival drawings — Turner becomes R.A. — Comparative
estimates of art of Turner and Girtin- Their respective influence on the water-colour
school— Girtin's on Constable.
GIRTIN, dying so young, left all his near relations as well as his
contemporaries in art to survive him, some for many years. His
widow, as his mother had done, married again. Her second husband's
name was Cohen. Thomas Calvert Girtin, the only child of Thomas
Girtin's brief marriage, became a surgeon. He resided at 48 Canonbury
Square, Islington, and possessed a valuable collection of his father's
drawings. In 1837 he edited a popular little work on human ana-
tomy called ' The House we live in ' (founded on an American book
of the same name by Dr. Alcott), which has run through many
editions. He is mentioned as a 'warm lover of the drama, and an
intense admirer ' of Samuel Phelps the actor, who when manager of
Sadler's Wells Theatre, from 1844 to 1862, was his friend and
neighbour in Canonbury Square, and to whom he filled the post of
family doctor.1
The artist's brother, John the ' letter and heraldic engraver,' also
survived him ; and after his death took up and published the Paris
views, then almost complete. They came out in 1803. The work is
entitled : A Selection of Twenty of the most Picturesque Views in
Paris and its Environs, 'drawn and etched in the year 1802 by the
late Thomas Girtin, being the only etchings of that celebrated artist,
and aquatinted in exact imitation of the original drawings, in the
collection of the Rl Honble the Earl of Essex.' The finished plates
bear imprints with dates from 16 Dec. 1802 to 4 April 1803. But
the etchings are variously dated from 16 June to 4 October 1802,
1 Life of Samuel Pkelps, by W. M. Phelps and Forbes Robertson (1886), p. 9.
u8 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
some at ' Islington,' and one at least (4 Aug.) has the imprint ' Drawn
etched and Pubd by T. Girtin, Scott's Place, Islington.' It has been
observed that in the lengthening intervals between the dates one
may trace the rapid failing of power to work, in the dying artist.1
The aquatint engravers employed to put in the light and shade
from the impressions tinted by him were J. C. Lewis, J. B. Harraden,
W. Pickett, and J. C. Stadler, the greater number being by J. C. Lewis,
who five or six years afterwards engraved in a similar style for Turner
the first plate of the Liber Studiorum. John Girtin published the Paris
views at his house in Little Newport Street.2 On ' May 16, 1817,' we
find the name and address, ' J. Girtin, Engraver, Printer &c. at No. 25
Old Compton Street, 3 doors from Prince's Street, Soho,' in the imprint
of a mezzotint portrait, by S. W. Reynolds after Opie, of ' the late ex-
traordinary artist,' Thomas Girtin. After dedicating this plate to ' Sir
George Beaumont, Bart.' as ' one of the artist's earliest patrons,' the
publisher adds : ' J. Girtin, in the recent fire in Broad Street, having
lost all his property excepting some prints &c. which with this portrait
of his late brother he respectfully offers to a liberal public.' In the
stock thus destroyed by fire it is said that there were some of Thomas
Girtin's finest works and many copies of the Paris views, which thus
became scarce ; 3 and moreover that John Girtin's calamity was not
confined to the loss of his house and goods, but that his invalid wife
died in his arms as he carried her through the flames.4 She was the
daughter of a Mr. Jackson, a wealthy timber merchant, who seems to
have been a queer sort of person. According to his own account, in
conversations with Mr. Chambers Hall, who obtained from him some
important Girtin drawings, he used to play the patron to his artist
nephew-in-law, going about with him and supplying him with money,
and promising him good dinners, on condition that he should first
make his host a drawing. He showed Mr. Hall a view from the
window of the Old Toy inn at Hampton Court, which he said he
1 Miller and Thornbury. The dates they give are June 16, 18, 25, 28 ; July 6, 12, 16,
19 ; August 4, 9, 17 ; September 2, 29 ; October 4.
2 In 1805 the name of ' Mr. Girtin, New Street, Covent Garden,' appears in a list of
subscribers to Dayes's works. If this be Thomas Girtin's brother, his subscription was a
Christian act. Another neighbouring address, given as that of John Girtin, is ' Castle
Street, Leicester Square.' See Thornbury's Life of Turner, 2nd edit. p. 7°- The title to
Ackermann's Repository, vol. i. (June 1809) has on it, ' Girtin scr1.'
3 A copy was sold in Paris — Vente Danlos — in December 1880 for 321 francs (about
I3/. ^. (,d.).
* Library of the Fine Arts, iii. 318.
CH. IV GIRTIN AND TURNER AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS 119
obtained in this manner. Mr. Hall was under the mistaken impres-
sion that this Mr. Jackson was the father, not of Mrs. John, but of
Mrs. Tom, Girtin ; and cited his authority for some stories, not, as he
made it appear, to his supposed son-in-law's credit ; alleging (among
other things) that his was a runaway marriage, which has been
sufficiently proved above, not to have been so in the artist's case.
Possibly he was speaking of John Girtin.
Mr. Hall gave the following account of the manner in which he ac-
quired some of Jackson's stock of Girtin drawings. Having received
no answer to a letter which he had written from Southampton to ask
the possessor whether he intended to part with any of them, and coming
to town about six months after, the intending collector called at Mr.
Jackson's. There was a fine carriage at the door, and high words were
heard within the house. Mr. Hall knocked. Mr. Jackson was ' not at
home.' But he presented himself immediately, saying, ' Yes, I am at
home.1 A gentleman who had been with him then entered the carriage
and drove away. ' 1 am at home to you,' says Jackson, ' because I
used you ill in not replying to your letter. If it had not been for that,
I should not have seen you. Do you know who that was who has just
left ? No ? It was the Earl of Essex, who wants my drawings. But
I won't part with them. He offended me. He would not take an
answer, and so I quarrelled with him and we have been at high words
about it.' Mr. Hall, as he was not to be received as a purchaser,
begged to be allowed at least to look round the room where the
drawings hung. Mr. Jackson pressed him to stay and dine. He did
so, and the two struck up an acquaintance, cemented by a second
dinner, by special invitation, ' to meet Captain * * .' After this,
Mr. Jackson's affairs became straitened by divers proceedings at law.
When two simultaneous Chancery suits had combined to drain the
exchequer, Mr. Hall thought the occasion had come for making a
fresh attempt. So he ventured to hint that he should be glad to
have a drawing or two. To his surprise, Jackson told him that lie
might have whichever he liked. Mr. Hall at once pointed out about
five, and, taking them out of their frames, carried them off in triumph.
He afterwards acquired more from the same source; and in 1855
presented to the British Museum the collection so made. In 1878 a
rich addition was made to the store of Girtin's drawings there, by the
bequest by Mr. Henderson of those formerly belonging to his father,
Girtin and Turner's old patron, of Adelphi Terrace.
120 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. n
Memoranda preserved by Pye, of what Chambers Hall told him,
afford some evidence of the prices charged both by Girtin and
Turner for drawings, during their joint life. Mr. Hall used to say
that for drawings of the largest size their prices were the same ; and
he described a fine one of Girtin's (27 by 19 inches in size) represent-
ing 'the ruined church of Jedburgh, seen in its full length, the river,
in which the building was reflected, flowing between it and the
spectator,' and ' near the front, standing in shallow water, and on a
sand-bank, female figures washing linen,' for which Mr. Thomas
Worthington (above mentioned) paid the artist his highest price,
namely six guineas.1 As this was exhibited at the Royal Academy
in 1797, in which year Turner made a celebrated drawing of the same
class, for which he charged eight guineas, Pye assumes that it must
have been made, as that was, the year before it was exhibited — that
is to say, in 1796 — each painter thus raising his price by two guineas
from one year to the next.
Girtin's works must have become more highly esteemed before
he died,2 for, in addition to his mother-in-law's story of his refusing
twenty guineas for one, and then giving it to a beggar, the following
letter from the Earl of Harewood, dated Harewood House, 27 July,
1801, names the same amount: ' I hope you have made the altera-
tions in the Drawings of this place which I wish'd you to do, and
that you have returned them to the house in Hanover Square. I
think you said they were to be 20 guineas each. If you will call on
Mr. Nelson, Merc*, at No. I Hylord's Court, Crutched Friars, he will
pay you on producing this letter 84 pounds. The frame-maker's
bill I will pay when I go to town.'
The drawing of Turner's to which reference is above made was
exhibited at Somerset House in 1798, and its exhibition constituted
an epoch in that painter's career. Its title was, l Nor/tain Castle, on
the Tweed — Summer's Morn,' to which the following lines from
Thomson's Seasons were added in the catalogue : —
But yonder comes the powerful King of Day,
Rejoicing in the East ; the lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow
Illumin'd — his near approach betoken glad.
1 Mr. Worthington made a copy of it, which he piesented to Mr. Hall.
2 The highest prices for drawings by Girtin, recorded in Mr. Kedford's Art Salt's, are
i63/. l6s. for 'Lichfield Cathedral,' in ' Charles Vine' sale, 1873; and l6l/. 14*. for 'The
Kiver Exe ' in ' Bale ' sale, 1881. All others are under ioo/.
CH. IV GIRTIN AND TURNER AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS 121
Pye relates ' that ' a few years before Turner's decease ' the
painter 'was walking with a friend'2 on the bank of the Tweed,
when, Norham Castle within view, Turner stopt and bowed in
obeisance.' On his companion's inquiring why he did so, he answered,
' Well I may ! It was my drawing of Norham Castle that brought
me into public notice.' Perhaps for this reason the subject was one
for which he had ever a marked affection. He drew it several times
with varying treatment. It was etched by him in the Liber Studiorum
in 1816, and mezzotinted there, and in the Rivers of England \i\ 1824
by Charles Turner. Heath engraved it singly in 1827, and Miller
in Scott's Prose Works in 1 834.
The following account is given by Pye 3 of the origin of this first
of the Norham drawings: 'In 1797, when Turner was 22 years of
age, Mr. Blake, of Portland Place, commissioned him to make a
drawing at the price of 8 guineas, which was [the price for] the
largest size then made, whether by Girtin or Turner. The subject
of the work was left to Turner's choice, who adapted to his purpose
Norham Castle. When Mr. Blake was shown the work, and had
been told by Turner that it was made expressly for him, he was loud
in expressions of pleasure at having become the proprietor of so
beautiful a work. "But," said Turner, "I have been offered 12
guineas for it." Mr. Blake having objected to paying for it more
than the sum agreed upon, and also to preventing Turner being the
recipient of the larger sum, the work never came into Mr. Blake's
possession.' In the following year 1798 the drawing' Norham Castle'
appeared in the Royal Academy exhibition. ' Many years after-
wards the public were reminded of the work by an engraving of
Norham Castle in the Liber Studiorum, on the lower margin of which
is the following inscription : " The Drawing in the possession of the
late Lord Lascells." ' Lascelles is the family name of the Earls of
Harevvood. In 1858 the drawing (27 by 19 inches) was at Harewood
House, Grosvenor Square, whence it was removed to Christie and
Manson's, and there sold on May the 1st, under the name ' A Castle
on a height above a river in which cows are standing,' to the late
Mr. John Dillon at the price of log/. 4-?. At the sale there of that
gentleman's collection in 1869, it was purchased by Agnew for 500
guineas. In 1887 it was the property of Daniel Thwaites, Esq., and
1 MSS.
1 Said to have been Cadell, the publisher. See Rawlinson's Notes on Collection of Draw-
ings by Turner at R.A. 1887, p. 9. • MSS.
122 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
lent by him to the Turner loan collection at the Royal Academy,
where its place was duly marked in the chronological sequence of
the painter's drawings. The descriptions under which Turner entered
his Norham drawing and his other landscapes in 1798 afford a note-
worthy contrast to those of previous years. Now and in future they are
accompanied by verses of descriptive poetry, and an indication of the
condition of light or weather under which the subject is intended to be
represented. A visit to the northern counties pppears then to have
wrought in Turner an enlargement of feeling in the presence of
grander and more impressive natural scenery similar to that which
inspired the soul and guided the hand of Girtin.
In 1799 a sunset view of Caernarvon Castle by Turner, and a
view of mountainous scenery near Beddgelert by Girtin, were two
rival drawings at the Academy exhibition, which, unlike in subject
and effect, are said to have attracted equal attention.1 But Turner,
as before said, was seeking for glory through his pictures in oil. He
had become an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800; and in
1802, the year of Girtin's death, he blossomed forth into a full
Academician, and instead of remaining as before plain ' W. Turner,'
he wrote his name at length, as he had been christened (at St. Paul's
Church, near the site of Girtin's grave), 'Joseph Mallord William
Turner, R.A.' Up to this time, though he had already launched out
into poetic themes, such as the two ' Plagues of Egypt,' he had for
the most part worked in the same field of nature with Tom Girtin.
Both were abroad for the first time in 1802, and it is by the con-
sideration of what they had done when painters of no experience
beyond the scenery of their native land that comparative justice can
best be done to their respective merits as artists.
' The impression derived," says Mr. Jenkins, ' from a comparison
of Turner and Girtin at this period, 1800-1802, is that Turner was
the more careful and painstaking, Girtin the more vigorous and
stronger in colour.' ' The breadth of Turner,' says Pye, ' is greater
than that of Girtin. Energy of individuality in Girtin is generally
greater than breadth.' William Havell said that both Turner and
Girtin were ' great experimentalists in rendering paper and water-
colours subservient to the expression of light, which they found to
be chiefly dependent on gradation.'2
1 William Havell to Pye.
'' ' In such matters,' he said, ' there was no trick that they were not up to. Turner used
CH. IV GIRTIN AND TURNER AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS 123
' In Turner,' adds Pye, ' gradation was the governing power.
In Girtin, gradation had its influence, but the parts were the
governing power. Turner's gradation commenced from the marginal
line of the foreground of his work. In Girtin's works it did not
begin till half-way to the horizon ; consequently it was not so com-
plete as Turner's.' But he adds, ' The composition of forms and
natural laws of light applied to the production of artificial light
in a drawing, or of chiaroscuro apart from and in connection with
local colours, were matters with which Turner was not more con-
versant than Girtin.' ' Sobered tints of exquisite truth, and broad
chiaroscuro, are,' says Leslie,1 ' the prevailing characteristics of Girtin.'
Pye regarded the English school of Landscape art which was
founded by Girtin and Turner as one ' based upon a practical know-
ledge of chiaroscuro,' the study of which had been little attended
to by continental artists. Havell, no mean authority, gave to Turner
the credit of being ' the first of the water-colour draftsmen who
aimed at making the eye of the spectator look into the subject of
the drawing beyond the surface of the paper on which it was
executed, and through it into immeasurable space.' The earlier
drawings of Paul Sandby and the school before Cozens he called
' unmeaning muddle,' declaring that ' in them the eye always rested
on objects individually.' But it was to Turner and Girtin alike that
he attributed the merit of ' introducing fine art into landscape
drawing, as Gainsborough had done in a less degree into paint-
ing.'
During the joint lives of Girtin and Turner these two artists may
be regarded as joint representatives of the new school of water-
colour painting of which they were the joint founders. But their
influence upon that school in its further development was very
different. Turner had few, if any, direct followers. His transcendent
power was acknowledged by all artists, and the greatest deference
was paid to his judgment when he chose to give it ; but the ' sincerest
flattery ' of imitation he never received. Girtin, on the contrary, had
hosts of followers even in his lifetime, and it is he who must be
looked upon as the real father of the group of painters of which the
to cut out figures in paper and paste them on his drawing. If his experiments spoiled one
part of a drawing, he would paste the good part upon another piece of paper, rub down the
edges of it, and work on the new surface till he brought the whole into harmony. He and
Girtin would also seek to create gradation by pumping water upon their drawings."
' Handbook for Young Painters, 265.
124 LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS GIRTIN BK. II
earlier and leading members of the Water-Colour Society were the
foremost representatives.
From the time of Girtin's death the school may be considered
as dividing itself into two branches, or more properly as two separate
trees, springing indeed from the same soil, and having grown together
as saplings, but with separate roots, one in the practice of Turner,
the other in that of Girtin. The former developed into a single
giant growth, majestic and solitary, crowning the forest ; while in the
latter case a seedling group of rising painters sprang up around a
stricken stump, and became the school of water colours that flourished
in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Nor was Girtin's influence quite confined to practitioners in that
material. Leslie tell us in his Memoirs of Constable ' that the whole
course of that painter's practice was affected by the contemplation
of about thirty works by Girtin which Sir George Beaumont recom-
mended him to study as examples of breadth and truth.
1 Chapter I., p. 6.
BOOK III
THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY
CHAPTER I
EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES — WELLS AND SHELLEY
Resuml of development — Water-colour art little known to general public — Exhibitions since
1760 — Absorbed in Royal Academy — Water-colours ill seen there — Their painters ex-
cluded from academic honours — An independent exhibition proposed — W. F. Wells —
Birth and education — Works at the Royal Academy — Published works — Connection wilh
Turner — Circular to draftsmen — Samuel Shelley — Birth — Miniaturesat the Royal Academy
— Copies from Reynolds —Changes of address — Paints portraits and 'history in small.'
' WHETHER Turner or Girtin, if either, is entitled to be called the
originator of the natural method of water-colour painting, which
gives their due value to the local hues of objects under various
influences of light, is an inquiry which has but slight bearing on their
relative positions as artists. Its interest in the history of this art is
of the same kind as that prolific, but not very profitable, subject of
discussion, the claims of the Van Eycks to the invention of oil-
painting.' ' But, to whomsoever due, it was a change of process
which led to an assimilation of effect and finally to a rivalry in force
between water-colour and oil. A full competition between the two
branches of art had not yet been rendered possible ; but the former
had now assumed a new rank and position. It was no longer
' drawing ' but ' painting ' in water-colours.
The old method still continued to be practised by some artists,
particularly as the commencement of a picture. And it has its
undoubted advantages. Pyne 2 admits that those who work by this
process ' can execute their tinted designs with ten times the despatch
of those who paint their compositions.' Still he holds that ' however
bright the effects which they may bring out by washing their colours
1 The Spectator, 14 August, 1875. * Somerset House Gazette, i. 193.
126 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
over a general and unvaried preparation of black and grey,' they are
properly denominated draftsmen or tinters ; ' not by way of reproach,
but from the mechanical ease of their practice.' For the purposes to
which it was applied by the old topographers, the tinted manner was
still, and for such purposes it in many respects remains to this day,
the best that could be employed. Except in providing the sensuous
delight of rich and varied colouring, and in effecting a close imitation
of details not essential to the story, there is ample scope in this
manner of drawing for an artistic portrayal of such subjects as have
usually to be dealt with by the topographic draftsman. In architectural
drawing, the union of line and wash is almost indispensable, and there
is no method which enables the sketcher to carry away more quickly
so complete a memorandum of so many material facts. In the hands
of some of the artists who followed Sandby, it was moreover shown to
be capable of being made the vehicle of great beauty of sentiment
and delicacy of expression.
But the purposes to which water-colours had now to be applied
belong to a different category from their old uses. Water-colour
artists had hitherto, as we have seen, looked to several special kinds
of employment as their means of subsistence. Landscape draftsmen
had begun by supplying drawings to the publishers of prints to
illustrate British topography. This practice led in time to their
engagement by travellers abroad, first to record the scenes in strange
lands laid open to view in voyages of discovery ; and then, as artist
companions to persons of wealth and position. Relations sprang up
between artists and amateurs which conferred mutual benefits upon
both. The art of the former gained in refinement through the
appreciation of its higher qualities by a more cultured taste, and the
latter acquired practical knowledge enabling them the better to
record, and at the same time the more accurately to observe, the
beauties of nature. Thus arose a further important source of
emolument to this class of artists as professional teachers of drawing.
Besides these occupations, which in general constituted the per-
manent and more regular means of living, water-colour drawings, or
' paintings ' as they were now entitled to be called, had come to be
regarded as desiderata by collectors to stock their portfolios with, if
not as yet to hang in heavy frames upon their drawing-room walls.
The prices of these works, valued for their own sakes as objects of
beauty and interest, not, as in earlier times, for the sake of their
CH. I EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES— WELLS AND SHELLEY 127
subjects only, or for their capacity to secure a profit by reproduction
as engravings, were rising year by year.
Hitherto the sale of such drawings had been chiefly promoted by
this private form of patronage. They were either executed on com-
mission, or mainly sought for by connoisseurs and a special class of
collectors. Among the general public, the excellence of the new
branch of art was little known, and the demand was proportionately
small for paintings in water-colour. The reason was that they had
not as yet been duly seen. There was in their case no adequate
provision for public display, no sufficient market for open sale.
Dealers no doubt existed who knew the wants, perhaps the weak-
nesses, of their customers. But their fraternity had not yet risen to
be arbiters of taste to millionnaires who lacked it, or to hold in their
hands the power of making a struggling artist rich or poor.
No doubt also there were the exhibitions. Since the opening of
the first, in the rooms of the Society of Arts in 1760, until near the
end of the century, there had been, annually, either one or two or
three exhibitions of the latest works of living artists in England.
Till the year 1768, when the Royal Academy was founded, there
were the two rival bodies, the Society of Artists (incorporated by
royal charter in 1765), and the Free Society (enrolled in the Court of
King's Bench in 1763), each of which had its annual show, the former
at Spring Gardens, the latter at several different places in succes-
sion, first at the Society of Arts, then in Maiden Lane, Covent
Garden, and afterwards at the bottom of the Haymarket. In both
of these, ' water-colours ' (i.e. distemper drawings) and stained or
tinted drawings had been exhibited. The Incorporated Society had
comprised the artists of greater distinction, but these were drawn off
into the ranks of the new Academy, which from the time of its first
exhibition, in 1769, had provided the principal, and whose galleries
at Somerset House were, at the time now under consideration, the
only regular public show-rooms of ' the year's art.' Its attractions
had at the outset distanced those of the rival exhibitions.
The Incorporated Society, shorn of its leading members, con-
tinued its annual shows at Spring Gardens till 1773, when it appeared
in new quarters, which it had built for itself in the Strand ; that is to
say, in a great room afterwards called the Lyceum, at Exeter Change,1
1 Exeter Change, between Wellington Street and Burleigh Street, on the site of the
Lyceum Theatre, was taken down in 1829. (Hutton's Literary Landmarks in Lomion.}
128 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK ill
where the Lyceum Theatre now stands. But this speculation was
fatal to the society. It had to sell the building in order to pay for
its erection, and afterwards maintained no more than a spasmodic
existence ; which in 1791 came to an end, where it began, at Spring
Gardens, after longer and longer intervals of suspended animation.
The Free Society, though always a much smaller concern, lingered
to a later date, holding annual exhibitions, which latterly attracted
no notice, till 1799. 'After the establishment of the Royal Academy,
not a single artist joined the society.' But it also had a great room
built for it, by Mr. Christie, next to Cumberland House, Pall Mall ;
and here it is presumed its exhibitions were held from 1769, or
earlier, until 1775, when it moved to St. Alban's Street, Pall Mall, and
was lost in obscurity.1
What had virtually been the case for many years past, was the
actual state of things now ; that is to say, at the time of Girtin's
death, and Turner's reception into the higher rank of the Academy,
in 1802. It was only to Somerset House, 'The Exhibition'2 as it
was called, par excellence, that the water-colour artist who was not
content to depend on private patronage only, or on the favour of
dealers, could go to exhibit his wares. Here, however, partly from
their own nature, partly from the arrangements of the galleries, they
were exposed to an unequal competition, which they were ill able to
bear. To some extent, indeed, the water-colour drawings were sepa-
rated from the oil-pictures. But the distinction made between their
was one which placed the former not only in a different, but in -
lower, category.
The rooms at Somerset House, occupied since 1780 by the Royal
Academy for their exhibition galleries, consisted of the following,
situated in the right wing, in the Strand. On the ground floor was
the Sculpture Room. On the first floor were the Library (a small
room), and the Antique Academy, leading to the Lecture Room,
described as 'spacious, elegant, and well-proportioned.' On the second
floor were the '^4#/z'-Room' (so always spelt), a small apartment re-
ceiving its light from an arched window above the entrance ; and the
1 See Pye's Patronage of British Art, 286.
z As one speaks of ' The Bible ' in contradistinction to all other f)tf)\la, the Royal
Academy exhibition was long known in London society as ' The Exhibition.' In 1851 the
title got transferred to the 'World's Show,' which took place in that year in Hyde Park.
The name was afterwards reserved for its international successors at South Kensington, but
has now lost its special meaning.
CH. I EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES— WELLS AND SHELLEY 129
Grand Exhibition Room, which, measuring about 60 by 50 feet, was
described as ' noble and spacious ' and ' judiciously lighted by four
arched windows ' distributing ' an equal light over the whole.' ' One
of the rooms used for the exhibition is called the ' Council Room '
in some of the catalogues. It is believed to have been appropriated
to that use at a later period.
With the exception of miniatures during the first few years, water-
colour pictures were never placed in the great room.2 That this
exclusion was not made in order to give their merits a better chance
of recognition, is suggested by the fact that in the rooms to which
they were admitted they were 'not only hung,' says Pyne, ' amidst
pictures in oil, but were generally surrounded by such inferior per-
formances as were not deemed worthy of a place in the principal
apartment. These were usually subjects ill conceived, badly drawn,
and worse coloured — garish and staring in effect, and commonly so
entirely at variance with harmony, as not only to excite disgust in
the spectator, but by the violence of their opposition, to do manifest
injury to the chaste and unobtrusive works in water-colours. These
disadvantages were not all ; the light in the apartments appropriated
to the water-colour department was ill calculated to display the
merits of such delicate and high-finished works ; being admitted
through common sashes, and frequently glaring on the subjects on
one side of the room, whilst those on the other side were exhibited
on the piers and spaces between the windows, with the light from
behind. Hence, many works of great merit appeared not as pictures,
but merely as so many pier-glasses. Moreover, the crowded state of
these apartments frequently interrupted the light from falling on the
pictures that happened to be hung within five or six feet of the floor.
Had the same works been exhibited in the upper story, where the
light was admitted from above, this latter inconvenience would have
been obviated, as the angle of light would have fallen [sic] uninter-
ruptedly upon all sides of the apartment alike.'3 Even had the
separation been fairly complete, the merits of the water-colours would
still have been ' eclipsed to the public eye ' by the contrast afforded
tin passing from ' large and splendid performances executed in oil,
under the influence of that imposing transparency and splendour
1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1780, p. 220.
2 Leslie, in a letter to Pye (22 December, 1857) respecting Turner's paintings
* Somerset House Gazette, i. 1 30.
K
130 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
which varnish superadds to pictures so painted/ to the adjacent apart-
ments appointed for the exhibition of ' works of their chaste and
unassuming character.'1 But 'the limited space then at the disposal
of the Royal Academy could not be enlarged, and the water-colour
painters consequently saw no prospect of exhibiting their works in a
way to do them justice.'
They had another and serious ground of complaint in the
existence of 'a law of the Royal Academy which excluded from
Academic honours those artists who wrought in water-colours only.
The painters in water-colours urged with reason that professional
rank ought not to depend upon the vehicle used, but upon the merits
of the works in whatever materials executed — that if the use of oil-
colours had its special advantage, so had water-colours, the practice
of which had become greatly developed ; and that it behoved those
who followed exclusively this branch of painting to endeavour to show
that the slight which the rule of the Royal Academy appeared to cast
upon it was unmerited ; and they pointed to the genius of Turner
and of Girtin and other artists of eminence, whose practice had
superseded the early stained and tinted manner of their predecessors '
of the time when the Academy had been founded ' and had contributed
to raise water-colour art to the dignity of painting.' 2
Moreover, those Academicians who painted in water-colour as
well as in oil acquired privileges when once elected (on the strength
of their oil-pictures) which enabled them to place their compeers in
the lower branch of art at a further disadvantage. ' Though the
splendid works of Turner, of Westall, &c.,' says Robert Hills, ' were
conspicuously placed, the greater part of the water-colour paintings
were hung,' as above stated, amidst oil-paintings, between windows
and under windows, sometimes in the darkened room with the sculp-
ture, where if they had merit it could not have been seen.' It has
even been said that ' the exhibitions of the Royal Academy were so
crowded with the products of amateurs, that the pictures of profes-
sional painters could not obtain that prominence they deserved.' 3
Under these circumstances,4 it occurred to certain of the painters
in water-colours, that it would be desirable to establish an indepcn-
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 130. * J. J. J. MSS.
* Art Journal, I July, 1850, p. 2l6.
• ' It is not true ' (as had been alleged), says Hills in some manuscript notes in the Society's
possession, ' that the thought of establishing the Water-Colour Society originated in the
fascination of the water colour drawings of Turner in the Council Room at Somerset House ;
CH. I EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES-WELLS AND SHELLEY 131
dent exhibition, wherein their works could be displayed to more
advantage. The idea is said to have first suggested itself to a land-
scape painter of recognized ability, if of no great distinction, named
Wells, who in his time enjoyed extensive practice as a teacher of
drawing.
WILLIAM FREDERICK WELLS was born in 1762 in London,
where as a boy of twelve he is said to have learnt from Barralet '
to draw in pencil and crayon. As a practitioner in art, his name
first occurs in the catalogue of the Royal Academy for 1795 with two
views in Scotland, after which date he had sent there from four to
eight drawings annually, mostly subjects from Wales. Possibly he was
the author of a ' Treatise on Anatomy, and Proportions of the Human
Figure, adapted to the arts of Designing, Painting, and Sculpture,
illustrated with copper-plates, designed principally for the informa-
tion of such Ladies as practise the above arts, &c.,' published in 1796.
Certainly he had a share in the production of a set of seventy-two
soft-ground etchings, in imitation of chalk drawings, which, gathered
into a folio volume in 1819, bear the title, 'A Collection of Prints,
illustrative of English Scenery, from the Drawings and Sketches of
Tlios. Gainsborough, R.A., in the various collections of the R'
Hon. Baroness Lucas ; Viscount Palmerston ; George Hibbert, Esq. ;
Dr. Monro ; and several other Gentlemen.2 Engraved and Published
by W. F. Wells and J. Laporte. J. Smeeton, Printer, 148 St. Martin's
but from drawings ' of others being ' badly placed, and mixed with oil ; from the Law casting
a stigma on water-colour painters ; and from the desire to establish a mart for sale of the
labour of years, and, of a surplus after expenses to the successful, by a dividend.' The
allegation thus traversed by Hills is contained in the following passage in a short biography
of Robson the water-colour painter, written in 1833, by Thomas Uwins, afterwards R.A.
'The writer is old enough,' he says, ' to recollect the time when the council-room of the
Royal Academy was devoted to the exhibition of paintings in water-colours. Here were to
be seen the rich and masterly sketches of Hamilton, the fascinating compositions of Westall,
the beautiful landscapes of Girtin, Callcott, and Reinagle, and the splendid creations of
Turner — the mightiest enchanter who has ever wielded the magic power of art in any age or
country. At this time the council-room, instead of being what the present arrangement
makes it, a place of retirement from the bustle of the other departments, was itself the great
point of attraction. Here crowds first collected, and here they lingered longest, because it
was here the imagination was addressed through the means of an art which added the charm
of novelty to excellence. It was the fascination of this room that first led to the idea of
forming an exhibition entirely of pictures in water-colours." (See Memoirs of Thomas
Uwins, R.A., by Mrs. Uwins, i. 30, 31.)
1 Redgrave's Dictionary. Probably J. Melchior Barralet, who taught both figure and
landscape. ^
2 Other owners are 'Mr. Alexander' and 'J. Laporte.'
K 2
132 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. HI
Lane.' Some of the plates are tinted in colours, and in some there
are monochrome shadows, put in by hand with a brush. The dates
upon them are from I January, 1802, to I January, 1805. Each artist
did half the number. Laporte's are drawn with greater freedom of
hand than Wells's.
Wells, as we see, was about thirteen years older than Turner and
Girtin. Of the former painter he was a lifelong friend, and is said to
have shown a fatherly kindness towards him. Turner was about
seventeen years of age (that is to say, it was about the year 1792)
when he was introduced to Wells by Robert Ker Porter. The
intimacy so commenced will be ever memorable from the circum-
stance of Wells's having happily suggested to the great painter the
first idea of his Liber Studiorum, and induced him to commence
that work, the four earliest drawings for which (executed in sepia)
were made at Wells's house at Knockholt in Kent. There is an
earlier, and also interesting, association between his and Turner's
careers. He went to school in the very house in Queen Anne Street
which, afterwards added to by Turner, was occupied by that artist
for so many years as a studio and gallery, and where the great
painter's hoard of pictures and piles of prints were found stored up
and rotting after his death in 1851. The schoolmaster was a Mr.
Harper ; but the fact that Turner had an aunt of the name of
Harpur (his mother's elder sister, wife of the curate of Islington, who
was grandfather of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of the painter's executors)
may be no more than a coincidence. Turner, on his side, is known
to have exhibited marked emotion on hearing of Wells's death in
1836.'
It was in the first or second year of the present century that
Wells ' endeavoured to stimulate some of his friends, practitioners '
of water-colour art, to form a society for the purpose of establishing
an independent exhibition of their paintings. ' He wrote,' says his
daughter,2 ' a very excellent letter, which was printed and sent to
1 He told Wells's daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, that he thought he should have died if he
had not been relieved by a violent hemorrhage at the nose. Turner, by his will, left a
legacy of loo/, to each of Wells's three daughters. A story related by Mr. Ruskin, in his
Lectures on Architecture and Painting, that Turner lent large sums to Wells's widow, and
refused repayment, saying, ' Keep it and send your children to school and to church,' is
contradicted by a correspondent in the Athenizum, 10 June, 1854, as quite inconsistent with
Wells's known condition and circumstances of life.
2 A Sketch of the or ginal Foundation of the old Waier-Colour Society, privately printed,
by Clara Wheeler, 7 pages, 8vo, 1871.
CH. I EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES— WELLS AND SHELLEY 133
all the principal draftsmen in the profession, to urge the necessity
of a movement in that direction.' No copy of this letter is known
to exist, but its motto —
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt — l
seems to have referred to a timid apprehension, which existed in the
outer ranks of the profession, of offending the members of the
Royal Academy. It was Wells's endeavour to overcome this feeling,
by contending that the desire for a separate exhibition was not
prompted by a spirit of antagonism or rivalry. He also sent many
anonymous letters, written by the same daughter (Clara, afterwards
Mrs. Wheeler), who acted as his private secretary.
A fair share, however, of the merit of conceiving, as well as calling
into existence, the first society for the exclusive exhibition of water-
colour art, should be apportioned to an older painter, Samuel Shelley,
who was Wells's first coadjutor in the scheme. Each had urged its
practicability in separate conversations with a common friend, who
thereupon introduced them to one another, and they then proceeded
to discuss the matter together.
SAMUEL SHELLEY, a quarter of a century older than Turner and
Girtin, and twelve years senior to Wells (for he was born in 1750),
could not be considered as one of the rising school that had effected
such changes in water-colour art. He was in age one of the earlier
generation, but he represented a class of painting in that medium
which, in its way, suffered nearly as much by the Academy arrange-
ments as did the water-colour landscapes. He was a figure-painter,
chiefly celebrated for his miniatures. But his practice was not con-
fined to the making of likenesses in little. In truth, he had not much
cause to complain, of his treatment as a portrait-painter. The
painting of miniatures, being an old-established branch of British art,
of well-recognized importance long before the Academy came into
existence, had not been unfavourably dealt with in the arrangements
at Somerset House. These charming little effigies, grouped together,
set in a better light, rendered attractive by their own delicate
brilliancy, as well as by their subjects, and having, as everyone knew,
to be judged on close inspection, could not have suffered as much
1 Measure for Meamn, act i. , sc. 5.
134 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
• as the water-colour landscapes by proximity to large and showy
pictures in oil.
From a small beginning and an obscure origin, Samuel Shelley
had risen to a place in the front rank of the miniature-painters of his
day, at a period of great excellence in that branch of art, having for
some ten or twelve years past shared the leading practice therein
with the gay and eccentric favourite of society, Richard Cosway, R.A.,
and the King's limner in small, Richard Collins.
Dayes tells us that Shelley was born in Whitechapel, and was in
some measure self-educated, but that he founded his style on the
works of Reynolds, which he copied early in life to his great ad-
vantage. In 1773 we find him living 'at Mr. Shelley's,' probably
his father's, in ' High Street, Whitechapel,' and beginning to exhibit
at the Incorporated Society's with some fancy heads in miniature. By
the next year he seems to have already made a good professional
connection, for he appears at the Royal Academy with portraits of
' a clergyman ' and ' a nobleman's three sons ' — whose, we know not,
for it was not then the custom to insert the names of sitters in the
general catalogue,1 though a key containing them was published and
sold separately. In 1775 he had a few portraits at the Exeter
Change gallery, but after this he confined himself to the Somerset
House exhibitions. In 1778 he makes a first move westward.
Leaving Whitechapel, where he had still hailed from ' Mr. Shelley's '
(or ' Shelly's,1 for the name is spelt both ways in the catalogues) at
Nos. 92, 24, and 62 successively, he sets up for himself2 'at Mr.
Fentum's, No. 78 Salisbury Street, Strand.' Creeping on year by
year through Litchfield Street, Soho, King Street, Covent Garden,
No. 1 6, and Henrietta Street, ditto, Nos. 20, 29, and 7, at which last
address he remains from 1784 to 1794, he finally settles in the
aristocratic quarter in which we now find him, at No. 6 George3
Street, Hanover Square, where stands the church at which Mr. and
Mrs. Tom Girtin were married, as many a prouder couple have been
before and since.
1 It was not until 1798 that names were given, and a charge (sixpence) was then first
made for the catalogue.
2 Possibly these are only business addresses, and do not indicate his actual places of
residence.
3 In this Georgian era it was sometimes called ' Great George Street.' It is not clear to
which noun the adjective was meant to apply.
CH. I EXHIBITORS' GRIEVANCES— WELLS AND SHELLEY 135
During this time he had been painting and exhibiting, not
portraits only, but what Dayes describes as ' history in small,' which
kind of practice that writer, who is naught if not censorious, regards
as raising Shelley ' above the character of a mere miniature painter,'
and placing him ' among the few who do not consider the profession
in a mercenary point of view.' We have seen that his first venture
in public was an ideal head. It is not, however, till 1780 that we
find him again so exercising his fancy in a drawing of ' Maria, from
Sterne.' ' Two years after, he becomes more ambitious, and paints
the ' Witches saluting Macbeth.' 2 This seems to have had an
encouraging success, for in 1783 he has as many fancy pieces as
portraits ; and then he goes on yearly intermingling illustrations from
poetic fiction with likenesses of living persons more or less distin-
guished. Mr. Graves counts up 140 works in all exhibited by Shelley
at the Royal Academy.
It was chiefly in these subject pieces that Shelley encountered
the damaging competition with oil-pictures of which Wells had
complained ; and subjects painted by him on ivory of a large size
had been accumulating in his studio.3 Thus, in the agitation for a
separate gallery, he could, as representing the figure element in
water-colour painting, make common cause with that artist, who spoke
for the landscape draftsmen.
1 Another Sterne's Maria by a different hand hung near it in the exhibition. A Sterne's
Maria, by Shelley, was sold at Christie's in February 1885 for 6/. 15^.
* Of this subject, there is a miniature on ivory by him at the South Kensington
Museum.
3 R. Hills— J. J. J. MSS.
I36 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
CHAPTER II
HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK
Robert Hills — Birth and education — Works at Royal Academy— Ardour in sketching —
Etchings begun— Takes pupils— Drawings — W. H. Pyne— Birth and education— Pars's
school — Works at Royal Aacademy — Etchings and illustrations— Social qualities — His-
torian and narrator— Instability of purpose — Plan of proposed society — Survey of pro-
fession— Nicholas Pocock — Birth and parentage — Commands Champion's vessels —
Sketches at sea — Settles in London — Early works— Paints sea-fights— Portrait by son.
SHELLEY had two sympathetic friends in the profession, nearly
twenty years younger than himself, who lived close by, and were
probably greater sufferers than he. One was Robert Hills, painter, in
water-colours, of animals and rustic scenes ; who lived but two doors
off, at No. 8. The other was William Henry Pyne, already mentioned,
and often quoted in these pages, a writer indeed to whom all historians
of English water-colour art must be indebted for much of their informa-
tion. He lived two doors further on, at No. 10.' In converse with
these near neighbours, Shelley aired his grievances, and the three had
many a chat together on the matter at their respective firesides.
ROBERT HILLS was born in Islington on the 26th of June, 1769.
Although thirty-four at the time now under consideration, he does
not seem to have come much before the public yet as a water-colour
painter of animals. He had exhibited at the Royal Academy a
' Wood Scene with Gipsy Fortune-tellers,' in 1791, and a ' Landscape'
in 1792, giving as his address, first ' Keppel Row,' then Alsop's
Buildings, New Road. His name then disappears from the catalogues
for seven years, turning up again in 1800, in ' Upper Grafton Street,
Fitzroy Square,' as exhibitor of a first ' Cottage Scene, with Cattle.1
In 1 80 1, he has a view of the gate of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (a
favourite subject that season), and he puts in the animals to two
drawings by Pyne, namely a view in Greenwich Park, and a Wilt-
1 R.A. Catalogue, 1801. Autograph letter, I November, 1802. By 1805 he had
mo%-ed to 38 Argyll Street, not far off.
CH. II HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK 137
shire farmhouse with cattle. With these exceptions, we do not find
his name as an exhibitor before the foundation of the Water-Colour
Society.
Some early instruction in drawing had been given him by the old
teacher, John Gresse, before mentioned, who for many years gave
lessons at Mrs. Broadbelt's school in Queen Square, Bloomsbury,
where young Hills was probably a scholar. ' But it is certain that he
soon found a wiser master in the force of his own inclination, which led
him to the study of animal life in the forest, the farmyard, and the pas-
ture, sketching with untiring zeal, deer, oxen, sheep and cattle, singly
and in groups, in great variety, or in observing their habits under the
varied influences of the seasons. His careful studies of the heads,
horns and bones of the different species testify to the pains he took
to master the distinctive features and exact structure of animal
form.' '
He was in his way a keen deerstalker, but his sport consisted in
recording, not in destroying, animal life. When out on such expedi-
tions, and absorbed in an object of such keen interest to him, he
would show the determination of his character. It is related that on
one of these occasions ' he suddenly came upon a magnificent stag, of
which he resolved, if possible, to secure a sketch. Like a sportsman
sighting his game, he stealthily followed the track of the retreating
animal deeper and deeper into the recesses of the forest, and only gave
up the pursuit when evening was closing in, to realize the fact that he
had not tasted food the whole day, and had many weary miles to
retrace before he could procure any refreshment.' l
Although so little of Hills's work had appeared on the exhibition
walls, he had already justified his later reputation by giving to the
world, as the result of his out-of-door studies of animal life, the
first instalments of a remarkably fine series of etchings, which, issued
in parts, had commenced in 1798, and were now in course of publica-
tion. It is probable also that he had become engaged in tuition,
which was afterwards to him, as to so many of our best water-colour
painters, a regular source of emolument.
Hills's pencil studies and sketches of animals and rustic scenes
are of extreme beauty. There can be no better models of practice in
the handling of his material as a means of expression. The late Mr.
George Smith, of Hamilton Terrace, had a large collection of them.
1 J. J. J. MS.
138 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. in
There are a few at the British Museum, some dated 1801 and
1802.
WILLIAM HENRY PYNE was born in the same year (1769) as
Robert Hills. According to Redgrave,1 he was the son of a leather-
seller in Holborn ; and the same biographer states that his father
placed him, when a boy, under a clever drawing-master, whom he
disliked, and would not serve as an apprentice. From Pyne's own
account, as editor of the Somerset House Gazette, this would seem to
have been one Henry Pars (he calls him ' William '), elder brother of
of William Pars, A.R.A. From about 1763 to the time of his
death in 1806 at the age of seventy-two,2 this teacher kept a drawing
academy well known in its day, which had been founded by a painter
called William Shipley (also the main originator of the Society of Arts),
to whom Pars succeeded at the date first mentioned. It was carried
on in a house in the Strand, which afterwards became a portion of
Ackermann's Repository of Arts. Here, says the writer, ' for one
short season we attempted the use of black and white chalks.' 3 For
copying plaster casts from the antique seems to have been the limit
of the practice at Pars's school, whither at that time students went to
be prepared for ' St. Martin's Lane.' 4
Leaving this scrap of autobiography to be further elucidated as it
may, we tread on surer ground when searching the Royal Academy
catalogues for Pyne's exhibited works. From 1790 to 1801 he had at
intervals been exhibiting drawings, twenty in all, coming for the most
part under the category of Landscape. But ' he possessed one great
advantage over most of his contemporaries who treated similar
subjects, in the ability with which he introduced figures and animals
into his landscapes, so as to render them, not mere accessories, but of
positive interest.' s In the titles of his first year's drawings, indeed,
figures are set forth by the titles as the acknowledged principals.
' Travelling Comedians,' ' Bartholomew-fair,' ' A Puppet-show,' and ' A
Village with figures merry-making,' are the congenial subjects with
which he breaks ground in 1790 and 1791. After this they are
chiefly rural views, in various English counties ; with a few, such as
1 Dictionary of the English School. * Redgrave's Dictionary.
3 Somerset House Gazette, ii. 221.
* Gilchrist's Life of Blake, \. 8, 9. Redgrave, in his Dictionary (< Henry Pars,' ' William
Shipley ') seems to confound the Strand school with the senior Academy.
* Art Union, October 1843.
CH. II HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK 139
' Corn Harvest,' ' Gipsies in a Wood,' ' Anglers,' and ' A Conversation,'
which give a hint that the figures constitute the main source of
interest. In 1801, he and neighbour Hills join brushes to produce
two works in combination, and then both abstain, while they and
their fellow-conspirators are hatching their plot.
But Pyne, like Hills, had also given evidence of his talent by a
use of the etching point. There are said to exist three large plates
by him of figure-groups for decorating landscapes, published by
Ackermann, in a wrapper, with the date i/pi.1 And there may be
more of that early time. There is also a book called ' Nattes's Practi-
cal Geometry, or an introduction to Perspective, translated from the
French of Le Clere, with additions and alterations,' which has a
vignette title-page engraved by W. H. Pyne after a design by C.
Nattes, with the imprint ' Pubd &c. for J. C. Nattes by W. Miller,
Albemarle Street, 1805.' A second edition, in 8vo, is dated 1819.
It is curiously illustrated with forty-four other plates containing
geometrical diagrams, under each of which is a vignette etched by
Pyne ' from designs analogous to the different geometrical figures,' the
subjects being such as the following : a horse-mill, windmill, water con-
duit and carts, kilns, pumps, cranes and other machines, with figures
about them appropriately employed as wheelwrights, printers, wood-
men, sawyers, brickmakers and other artisans at work ; and pic-
turesque objects and groups of various kinds. Many of these are
signed ' W. H. Pyne. 1 803.'
At this time he must also have been actively engaged in putting
together the varied contents of a work which when complete was
published in two volumes oblong folio, with the title, ' Microcosm, or a
Picturesque Delineation of the Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures &c.
of Great Britain, in a series of above a thousand groups of small
figures for the embellishment of landscape, comprising the most inte-
resting subjects in rural and domestic scenery, in external and internal
navigation, in country sports and employments, in the arts of war
and peace ; the whole accurately drawn from nature, and etched by
W. H. Pyne, and aquatinted by J. Hill — to which are now added
explanations of the plates, and essays relating to their various subjects
by C. Gray. . . . Pubd by W. H. Pyne, No. 38 Argyle Street, and
J. C. Nattes, No. 5 Woodstock Street, &c.' Vol. i. (2nd edit, dated
1806) contains 61 plates, and vol. ii. 71. The imprints on the plates
1 Bookseller's Catalogue.
140 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
have dates from March 1802 to 1807. Other series of plates of the
same class by him belong to a later date.
A few groups like those of the Microcosm are at the British
Museum. In them the pen is used neatly (without the freedom and
dash of a dexterous sketcher such, for example, as Rowlandson), and
some are composed with much taste. There is a drawing by him at
South Kensington of ' Rustic Cottages ' with the date 1806 ; ' painted
in transparent colour, lights taken out, and some opaque colour
used.' '
The writer of an obituary notice of Pyne in the Art Union of
October 1843, who seems to have known him well, considers him to
have been ' in many respects the beau ideal of the artistic character —
disinterestedly devoted to art for its own sake, even to enthusiasm,
yet unfortunately for himself not gifted with the enthusiasm of
application. A sort of constitutional easiness and happy tempera-
ment of mind rendered him more indifferent to worldly success, even
in his profession, than was consistent with prudence. Otherwise he
might no doubt have distinguished himself as one of the first water-
colour painters of the day, especially in familiar rural landscape
scenery and topographical views with old buildings, which he either
sketched or composed with great facility, and with admirable feeling."
The same writer gives him the credit of having ' in some instances
invented, in others improved upon ' the processes which transformed
the tinter's art into water-colour painting. But we do not find him
making any such claim on his own behalf. He had begun in the old
manner. ' In his early works,' says Redgrave, ' his foregrounds are
carefully drawn with the pen and tinted with warm colour, his middle
distances put in with grey.' But he was now one of those who most
clearly appreciated the importance of the change which had taken
place in the technique of water-colour art.2
Pyne himself, however, has been more widely recognized as the
historian of that art, than as one of its leading practitioners. Of his
1 Descriptive Catalogue, 175-
2 Graves, in his Index, describes the twenty-two works which Pyne exhibited at Somerset
House between 1790 and 1811 as being chiefly 'portraits;' a description which in fact
applies to no more than two, which he exhibited in the last of those years, he then having
had nothing at the Academy since 1801. Pyne no doubt was a versatile artist, and could turn
his hand to portraiture when he chose. John Britton the antiquary had two drawings of his,
one representing ' The Beefsteak Club,' the other ' The Sale of Dr. Mead's Pictures and
Antiques,' both with portraits, and said to be capital illustrations of the time. See also
Britton's Autobiography, Part II. p. 183.
CH. II HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK 14i
literary works there will be occasion to speak more fully by-and-by.
Suffice it at present to say that in their lively, unclassic style, and the
fund of anecdote they contain, they bespeak the writer's turn for
gossip, as well as a certain instability in his character. ' Gossip,' says
his biographer above quoted, 'was at once his forte and his foible.
He was not so remarkable for conversational as for narrative power.
No one could tell a story better or more graphically. Anecdote
would beget anecdote and story story from him, during an entire
evening, to the immense gratification of his auditors, but to the
suspension of other conversation. He has been known to go out to a
breakfast party, and by entertaining to detain all the company till one
o'clock the following morning. But this talent was dearly paid for,
by his indulging it too far, to the sacrifice of time, and the interrup-
tion of study that might have been more profitable. Another foible
in him was want of steadiness in his pursuits. He was always pro-
jecting some scheme or other, some of them very chimerical ones, as
to whose success he was for the time most sanguine until a fresher
one started up out of his prolific imagination.' ' This was the kind
of man to espouse with warmth the cause of the slighted draftsmen ;
and he now bent his energies to the task in hand of securing fair
play to their profession. If the above account of him is to be relied
on, he must have ruled the discussions in George Street, Hanover
Square.
The nature of those discussions may be in a measure inferred
from the protocol of regulations for the Society, which was their
eventual outcome. The reformers were soon agreed- as to the evils
that existed, and as to the proper remedy to be applied. It was
conceived that, given the materials of an attractive exhibition, a mode
might be devised for an equitable distribution among the members
of any surplus which should arise from the excess of the receipts at
the doors over the annual expenses of rent, advertisements, money and
check takers, upholsterers &c. The members' shares in such distribu-
tion were to be proportioned to ' the capital they had thrown in of
labour and also frames and glasses. Another prominent feature in
the first sketch for a plan and constitution was suggested by the
reflection that when a work at the Royal Academy, through its own
merits and the advantage of a good place, had attracted the notice of
a lover and patron of art, there had still been an impediment to its
1 Art Union, October 1843.
142 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
sale in the awkwardness of backing out of the artist's house when
the price asked was deemed too much, or perhaps finding that it was
already sold. A clerk in the exhibition room with a book containing
the prices of all those paintings sent for sale, ready to answer
inquiries and to take deposits, would give the artist a much better
chance for customers than he would have at the Royal Academy ; as,
on the other hand, if a would-be purchaser asked the prices of twenty
works by the same hand or by as many different artists, and found
that every one according to his opinion had been overrated, he would
have paid his shilling for looking at them, and owed not even a hint
of apology for having purchased nothing.' '
But the preliminary difficulty had first to be encountered by the
projectors of obtaining a sufficient number of adherents to the good
cause. Of the old leaders of the school most had passed away or
were hors de combat. The elder Cozens, Barret, Gainsborough, were
long since dead. They had been followed in the last decade of the
old year by Webber, Grimm, Tom Sandby, William Marloiv, and
John Cozens. Thomas Malton (the elder), Michael Rooker, and
Wheatley, all died in 1801, and James Malton in 1803. Before the
scheme was to. be accomplished, Thomas Malton (the younger), and
poor Dayes were to go too, both in 1804. In their midst, the bright
flame of young Girtiris genius had burst forth, and in 1802 expired.
Hale old Paul Sandby was living yet, in sunny St. George's Row.
But his sum of winters approached fourscore ; and he and Hearne,
now in his sixtieth year,2 were to be reckoned as veterans of the old
generation, not as reformers of the new. There were Loutlierbourg,
aged sixty-three, Farington, fifty-six, and Thomas Daniell, fifty-four, all
of whom had practised more or less in water-colour. But they were
in the Academy. The splendid talent of Turner was inaccessible
for the same reason. But there were a number of rising men, and
others that had attained eminence, who favoured the project. It was
believed that their works, brought together, would form an exhibition
not only attractive to the public, but remunerative to the artists.
' Shelley, besides his popularity from miniature portraits,' had, as before
mentioned, ' a collection of subjects on ivory of a large size. Glover 'of
Lichfield had started and was in vogue. J. Varley was a man of
1 R. Hills. MS.
2 Hearne died on ' April 13, 1817, and was buried by his friend Dr. Monro in Bushcy
churchyard.' (Redgrave's Dictionary.} The publication of the 'Antiquities' plates con-
tinued till 1806.
Cil. II HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK 143
acknowledged talent. There were still Nicholson, Cristall, and
others.' '
And among the older painters of acknowledged repute there was
at least ' Warwick ' Smith who had declared himself favourable to
the scheme. With his name it seemed to be feasible. But, friend
though he was, he was also cautious not to commit himself to a share
of certain expenses and uncertain advantages. He promised re-
peatedly to attend, but as often failed to do so — ' playing,' as Hills
describes his conduct, ' She would and she would not.' Others were
shy of the undertaking for the same reason, others again from a
dread of hopeless exclusion from the Royal Academy in case of
failure. The utmost hope of the projectors had been that they might
muster twenty names to start with ; but from the above causes the
accomplishment of their plans was delayed (reckoning from the time
of Wells and Shelley's first conception) for nearly three years. It
was not until the autumn of 1804 that ten artists could be got
together to mould the concern into a definite shape.
Some of the six recruits were men of weight and distinction. The
oldest in years was Nicholas Pocock. He was chiefly a marine painter.
It was very desirable to have a branch of art of such living interest
in that age of naval warfare adequately represented in the exhibi-
tion, apart from the valuable element of variety which it would impart.
Pocock was an artist of position, deservedly in high esteem. Though
one of the now antiquated school of stainers and tinters, he has been
reckoned ' among the first to rescue his art from the dominion of out-
line by blending softness and aerial perspective with force of effect.' 2
NICHOLAS POCOCK was born about 1741, and consequently
sixty-three or so when our Society was formed. His knowledge of
marine matters was derived from actual experience as a sailor, he
having when a young man had the command of vessels owned by
Mr. Richard Champion, a Bristol merchant. It was the same Richard
Champion who afterwards took to making china, and became cele-
brated as the producer of the fine porcelain known as Bristol ware.
Redgrave 3 tells us that Pocock's father was himself a merchant of
that city and a man of good descent. But he seems to have left his
family somewhat ill provided for. Champion's sister writes of
'Captain Nicholas Pocock, who commanded the Lloyd' (in April
1 R. Hills. MS. * J. W. Papworth. MS. « Dictionary of the English School. '
i44 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
1767), as a 'young man who had been some time in' that ship-
owner's ' employ, one of three brothers, whose mother was a widow
supported by this son. He was,' she adds, ' much caressed by my
brother, and valued by us all ; ' and she speaks of his having unusual
good sense and diffidence, which made him duly conscious of a lack
of hiVh educational culture. In the intervals when he was not at
o
sea he spent much of his time at ' Mr. Champion's, and never seemed
happy but when there.'
Pocock sometimes talked of giving up his sailor's life, to enable
him to indulge his fine taste for drawing. When at sea his graphic
talent was in constant exercise. ' Six volumes of journal, fair copied,
and illustrated with charming drawings in Indian ink of the principal
incident in each day, are ' or were ' in the possession of Champion's
grandsons. Some of the subjects are very artistic, and, though
necessarily on a small scale, are always interesting. A gale, a calm,
a vessel spoken or a sail in sight, or some object strange or new that
arrested attention, never failed to be recorded by his facile pencil.
Having commanded the Lloyd, and afterwards the Minerva, for some
years, he carried his early resolutions into effect,' by leaving the sea
and taking to the fine arts as a profession.1 He was then about
thirty years of age.
Redgrave says,2 ' He drew portraits, landscapes, and sea-pieces,
devoting himself chiefly to marine subjects,' and that ' in 1780 Sir
Joshua Reynolds wrote him an encouraging letter, criticizing his first
picture in oil, which had arrived at the Academy too late for ex-
hibition.' His first exhibited works were in 1782, when he sent four to
Somerset House. Two were portraits of ships, and two were views in
or near Bristol. From that time he became a frequent exhibitor, and
' many an early sketch of scenery in South Carolina and the West
India islands was turned to account.' A fine early picture from his
pencil, representing ' Earl Rodney's victory over De Grasse 3 in the
West Indies, I2th April, 1782,' is in the possession of the Bristol
Society of Merchants. It was engraved in line by Francis Chesham,
and published by Walker, 148 Fleet Street, I March, 1784, the
above society subscribing ten guineas towards the expense.
1 Hugh Owen's Ceramic Art in Bristol (1873), P- 49-
1 Dictionary of the English School.
1 There is a large picture by Pocock at Greenwich of a previous repulse of the French
under De Grasse in the same year, by Sir Samuel Hood's fleet, which took place at St.
Kill's in January 1782.
CH. II HILLS, PYNE, AND POCOCK 145
In 1789 Pocock left Bristol, where he had hitherto continued to
reside, and settled in London. He had then married a wife, and
begun to rear a family. Soon he rose to distinction as a painter of
naval engagements, for which the long struggle for mastery at sea
that followed the declaration of war with France in 1793, gave him
only too ample a supply of subjects. Since 1796 Pocock had
resided at No. 12 Great George Street, Westminster, where he en-
joyed an extensive acquaintance with admirals and commanders of
the navy. He had also in his visiting circle some of the theatrical
celebrities of the day, including the Kemblcs and Mrs. Siddons.
A fine portrait of him by his son Isaac,1 who had already esta-
blished himself as a figure painter, represents Nicholas Pocock as of
gentle aspect, with large dark eyes, generally handsome features, and
a sensible expression.
1 Isaac Pocock, besides being a painter, was also a dramatic author. He wrote the once
popular melodrama 'The Miller and his Men.' There is a caricature portrait of N. Pocock
in A. E. Chalon's drawing of ' Artists in the IJritish Institution,' engraved in the Portfolio,
Nov. 1884, p. 219.
146 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
CHAPTER III
NICHOLSON
Francis Nicholson— Autobiography — Birth and education — Want of sympathy — With
Beckwith at York— With a copyist at Scarborough— At Pickering — Paints horses, dogs
and game — Patrons — First visit to London — Paints seats and portraits — At Whitby —
Takes to landscape— Mode of multiplying sketches— Exhibits in London— At Knares-
borough — Fraudulent copies — Visit to Lord Bute in Scotland— At Ripon — Draws for
Walker's magazine — Travels with Sir H. and Lady Tuite — Settles in London — Engaged
in teaching — Power of water-colours — ' Stopping-mixture' — Two impostors — Society of
Arts and the drawing-masters.
THE next recruit was also past mid-age. He was an able landscape
painter, whose works contribute to form some of the stronger links
that unite the old school with the new, namely the Yorkshire artist
before mentioned, ' Francis Nicholson.'
Nicholson lived to a grand old age, and died in 1844, long after
the events we are now about to relate. In the latter end of his life
he drew up for his children's gratification ' some account,' as he
styled it, ' of my various employments during a period of eighty years
and upwards, the time having been passed in my practice of the
arts.' After the writer's death his son-in-law, the late Mr. T. Crofton
Croker, F.S.A., had entertained the idea of printing the contents of
this manuscript for circulation among friends. But this was not
done, and after some ten or twelve years had elapsed it was thought
by the family that these autobiographical sketches would not prove
of sufficient general interest to justify their publication. Happily,
however, Mr. Jenkins was favoured with a manuscript copy, from
which most of the facts about to be related are taken, often in the
words of the original. At the time when these notes were put
together their author may have been right in assigning to them no
more than a private interest, on the ground that the events described
were ' what thousands of people before him must have been equally
subject to in following the same pursuits.' But the very fact of their
possessing this generic character gives them value in such a history
CH. ill NICHOLSON 147
as the present, as affording a type of professional life during the
period to which they refer. In making use of Nicholson's memoranda
for the following account of his earlier career, the present compiler
has therefore abstained from trimming too closely their margin of
extraneous matter.
FRANCIS NICHOLSON was born on the 1 4th of November, 1753,
at Pickering in Yorkshire, ' where,' says Redgrave, ' his family
possessed a small property.' On his own evidence he was an in-
dustrious, painstaking lad, who, notwithstanding a manifest penchant
or the pencil, would not suffer a good school training to be thrown
away upon him. His practice in drawing began very early in life,
the first attempt being a sketch of a ship made with a piece of
chalk upon his ' Reading-made-easy.' ' My cousin, George Kirby,"
says he, ' who sat next to me on the same form, having done one on
his own book, I thought surely I could do that or anything that he
could do.' From the preparatory school where this incident oc-
curred he was sent to a secondary one to learn writing &c. Here
his first attempts were not encouraging. He was called an awkward
dog, that would never be good for anything. But the master who
said so changed his opinion, and became proud of showing off the
boy's progress in arithmetic and in drawing, prognosticating that he
would be another ' Cozens, who went to London and became a
famous draftsman.' This must mean Alexander Cozens, and tends
to show the repute that artist enjoyed.
Middle-class education in Yorkshire seems to have stood pretty
high even in the early days of King George the Third's reign, for young
Nicholson was but ten years old when, in 1763, he was entered at
the principal school in Pickering 'for instruction in arithmetic, geometry,
trigonometry, astronomy, &c. This,' he adds, ' was the last of my
schooling ; and although a great part of what I had acquired could
never be of much use to me, I did not consider the whole time lost,
as I could work my questions and have time to draw also. I
remember once the master was angry and rebuked me for doing too
much ; I being in decimals and applying for questions so often that
he lost patience, saying, " Put it down, put it down ! If I am to set
questions as fast as you can work them, I shall have no time for
anybody else. Shut up your book for the day." '
When the boy's school days were over, and it became necessary to
settle his course of life, it was found that he had acquired a bent for
148 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
graphic art too strong to be resisted. Nicholson dates his determi-
nation to be an artist from the year 1760 (he was then but seven),
when, happening to be sent on an errand and being shown into a room
to await an answer, he cast his eye upon a portrait that hung there
— ' a portrait,' he says, ' I shall never forget, nor what passed in my
mind respecting it, thinking, if I ever attained the power of doing
anything like that, there was nothing in the world I should wish for,
or be disturbed by, notwithstanding the increasing complaints of
the hardness of the times and the difficulty of gaining a subsistence.'
But the poor fellow found himself in an unsympathetic world,
among people who had not an idea beyond methods of tillage and
the succession of crops. Such subjects were fluently discussed
around him, but he could not attend to what was said or retain it in
his mind, and so came to the sad conclusion that he differed from
the rest of his species. His father regarded the exercise of the
pencil as an idle amusement, and did his best to wean him from such
a pursuit. After leaving school, therefore, our young artist was reduced
to drawing by stealth. But he had a kind aunt, who furnished him
with materials, and secreted him in a little back parlour, where he
employed himself in copying prints. The son speaks tenderly of his
parent's natural prejudice in preferring ' a good regular trade of any
kind whatever ' to ' a precarious fancy employment.' ' In that,' says
he, ' he was not singular, the father of my friend Jackson ' being of
the same mind. When many of his friends endeavoured to prevail
on him to allow his son to follow his inclination, it was long before
he could be brought to consent to it. Dr. Harrison, of Kirby
Moreside, his strong advocate, laboured hard to convince the old
man how much better his son would do as an artist than he could
ever hope to see him do by continuing to follow his own trade ; but
he ever replied, " He is as good a tailor as ever sat on a shop-board,
and how can he do better?": Nicholson's father did not remain
obdurate, and when he at length consented to his son's wish had the
good sense to be as desirous to give him every assistance in his
power as he had before been to obstruct him. There was no artist
nearer than York, and even there but one, whose name was Beckwith.
With him, therefore, young Nicholson was left for a month on trial.
If the result should be satisfactory, he was to be apprenticed for seven
1 The portrait painter, John Jackson, R.A., born at Lastingham in the North Riding
of Yorkshire, 31 May, 1778.
CH. in NICHOLSON 149
years. Mr. Bcckwith approved of the student's copy of an outline
of a head which was placed before him to see what he could do —
' approved of it, perhaps, too well,' says Nicholson, ' as it afterwards
appeared. Though it was very little that I knew,' he adds, 'yet
I could perceive that he was but a poor performer, but (his being
the only instruction to be had) was very willing to be placed with
him. In the month of trial he painted a small whole-length portrait
of a gentleman. The picture seemed to me bad, having no effect,
cutting in every part hard against the background, as though the
figure had been put on by stencilling. I perfectly remember the
feet ; the shoes being black all over, and not foreshortened so as to
appear standing upon the floor, but like an elongated ace of spades.
So the figure stood upon the points of his toes. Yet the likeness
in the face was obtained, which was the main point. The sitter was
dressed in white cotton stockings, which Mr. B. objected to, as they
would catch the eye, and he prevailed upon him to allow himself to
be hosed in blue worsted.' Poor as Mr. B.'s painting was, he could
talk about it fluently enough ; and when Nicholson called upon him
some years afterwards, he found him somewhat severe on the drawing
of Sir Joshua. The proposed apprenticeship broke down, however,
on grounds unconnected with art. Good motherly Mrs. Nicholson,
on coming to see her boy, found out by shrewd questioning that he
was poorly fed, and had to eke out his repasts by spending his
pocket money at the baker's, and that the apprentices were still
worse off, having to eat, instead of good brown bread, a coarse con-
fection known by the name of ' Roger.'
Her husband in the mean time learned from a fellow-townsman,
one Mr. Stockton, then established at York as a chemist, that
Beckwith wanted to have a clause inserted in the indenture by which
the apprentice should be debarred from exercising his profession in
that city. Mr. Nicholson sagaciously inferred that, if the master
were already afraid of his pupil, he would never fulfil his duty as an
instructor, but, on the contrary, do his best to keep him back. So
the young artist was taken home again, very unwillingly on his part,
though he had ever after great reason to be thankful for the escape
from a sacrifice of seven good years of his life.
His parents now turned to Scarborough as affording the only
chance of help. There was a nearly self-taught painter there, who
had received some instruction from a crony of his, a clever but eccentric
i$o THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. m
travelling artist called Smirke. This Smirke had been induced by
one of his countrymen to leave Carlisle, his native place, and come to
Scarborough with his son, in the hope of finding good employment
there in the spare season. Failing to do so, he went to London, and
there apprenticed his son to Bromley the coach-painter in Long Acre.
The son afterwards distinguished himself as a subject-painter, being
no other than Robert Smirke, R.A., himself the father of a family of
artists. As the Smirk es are known to have come to London in 1766,
this gives us an approximate date for these events. Young Nicholson
may have been about thirteen when he went to this Scarborough
painter for tuition in art.
' My instructor,1 he writes (without telling his name), ' never
painted an original subject, but succeeded very well as a copyist, and
had done several from good old masters. He copied a Guido, the
size of the original, as well as most artists would have done it ; the
subject being the daughter of Herodias bearing on a charger the head
of John the Baptist. He painted every kind of subject, but his
favourite was the horse, he having in his youth been a racing jockey.
He always maintained that he never saw a picture he could not copy ;
which I think he would have done passing well. But he never had
confidence to attempt more.'
After being three years at Scarborough, young Nicholson returned
to Pickering to get what employment he could. The prospect was
not very bright. ' In my commencement,' he writes, ' I lost much
time, being confined by circumstances during many years in a part of
the country where works of art were scarcely to be found, and among
a people utterly unable to appreciate such, if they had possessed
them.' But as there were in the neighbourhood several resident
gentlemen, ' nearly the whole being what are called sportsmen,'
young Nicholson was employed to paint the portraits of favourite
horses, dogs, dead game, &c. Of the last he had good opportunities
of painting from nature. Often, when these gentlemen killed game
in a high state of beauty and fine plumage, it was sent to him for
study. Occasionally he had a human sitter for a portrait ; and he
found himself comfortable, not only in having a good home, but kind
friends. The chief of these was Thomas Hayes, Esq., a magistrate
in the neighbourhood, at whose house the young artist was always
welcome. A bed and a place at the table were his when he was
there, and he would stay for weeks, and nearly at all times when he
CH. Ill NICHOLSON 151
had no other engagements. Of this hospitable patron he made
several portraits, and he also painted those of Mrs. and Miss Hayes.
' I have,' he writes, ' a duplicate of his, and prize it next to that of my
good and kind aunt.'
Nicholson had another much valued friend in Mr. Blomberg, a
descendant of Baron Blomberg, who came over with George the First,
and settled at Kirby Misperton, near Pickering. For him he painted
several pictures, one of which, of dead game, was recognized long
after by his brother, who also used the brush, and did the house-
painting for the Rev. Dr. Blomberg, into whose possession the
property had come on the death of Nicholson's patron. ' You seem
to like that picture,' said the Doctor, observing that he was gazing
upon it one day when he came to inspect his men's work. ' It is a
great favourite of mine. I have no doubt it is an original, but so
different from everything I have seen of the same subject, I cannot
make out whom it is by, and should like very much to know.' ' I
can inform you of that,' said the decorator ; ' it was painted by my
brother, when he lived with the rest of the family at Pickering, and
he painted many more of the same kind for gentlemen in the neigh-
bourhood.' ' I should like to know,' writes the artist, ' whether Dr. B.
continued to view it as a favourite, or, what is more likely, sent it up
into the garret.'
Mr. Blomberg also employed him to take portraits of his dogs, a
task which gave him some trouble, by reason of the unwillingness of
some of them to stand a steady gaze. An enormous house-dog of
the Newfoundland breed was induced to sit to him twice, but never
would come in his sight again if he could avoid it ; always taking
himself off to the house of a tenant, where he would stay a few days.
If at his return the artist with the evil eye were gone, he remained at
home ; if not, he trotted back. The same was the case with several of
the larger breeds. A favourite pointer, whose portrait he tried to take
in the dining-room, fairly bolted through the window to avoid being
stared at. ' But at terriers, harriers, or mongrels,' says Nicholson, ' I
might have stared myself blind without their notice.' Thus he fagged
on for about two years, all the time hating the country, ' where little
was to be seen and nothing to be heard worth listening to,' and still
feeling that he was like nobody, and nobody like him.
At last the long-wished-for time arrived when it was deemed
necessary to send him to London for further instruction. There,
152 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. lit
entering a new world of sympathy, he, to his astonishment and
delight, met with hundreds of people like himself, who neither knew
nor cared more about agriculture, cattle, manure, and tillage than he
did. ' The Exhibition ' being open (it must have been the Royal
Academy in its old rooms in Pall Mall), he found ' plenty of subjects
for study.' But it is curiously illustrative of our proverbial contempt
for things familiar, that at that time Nicholson, afterwards best known
for excellence in rural landscape, nurtured as he was among the very
scenes that were to inspire the poetic feelings of a Turner and a
Girtin, besides a host of lesser artists, should add the following
confession : ' One class was little attended to. When the finest
landscapes of Wilson, Barret, and others were pointed out to my
notice, I only said, " I hate to look at them, they are so like the
country." '
While in London, Nicholson took some lessons from Metz, ' a
German artist who drew the figure extremely well,' who procured for
him several good pictures, which he copied, one in particular, ' Jason
destroying the Dragon,' by Salvator.1 Smirke also, with whom he
became acquainted, being frequently with him at Bromley's, procured
for him from different friends several pictures to copy.
After about seven months in London, being unable to obtain
means of recruiting his now exhausted funds, he had to return to the
country, disliking it more than ever. When he gets back to Yorkshire
he begins the same kind of practice, out of which we have already
seen so much of the school of water-colour landscape to have taken
its rise. In addition to the favourite horses and dogs which had con-
stituted the only subjects which the country gentlemen had called
upon him to paint, he now mentions a demand for ' views about their
places of residence.' There being no one else to paint these subjects,
the whole fell to Nicholson's share. After a good deal of such practice
he was able to get nine more months in London, during which he
' did many things,' and then, returning to Pickering, found employ-
ment as before. He now for the first time speaks of making what
were probably water-colour drawings. ' At Scampston, the seat of
Sir William St. Quintin, I made for him a set of drawings of the
1 ' Many years afterwards,' adds Nicholson, ' being settled in London, I was engaged to
give lessons in drawing to Miss Smith, a daughter of Mr. Smith, many years M.P. for the
county of Norfolk. He had collected many excellent pictures. One of them was the Jason
I had copied.'
CH. ill NICHOLSON 153
house and grounds — another for the Lord of the Manor, Mr. Hill, of
his seat and grounds ; also several pictures in oil of his horses and
dogs. From the best of my friends, Mr. Hayes, I had employment
of several kinds, and painted for him the ceiling of a large summer-
house in his garden, filled with mythological figures. The subject is
the triumph of Britannia. This employed me 7 or 8 months. If I
could see it now, it would doubtless be with a desire to brush it out.'
He also painted portraits when he could get a sitter. That
Nicholson had some of the social tact essential to a successful career
in this line, is evinced in the following amusing account of the sittings
he received, about this time, from a certain Captain H. Clarke. One
day this gentleman observed how unfortunate he had been in sitting
to thirteen different artists, not one of whom succeeded in producing
a likeness. His features were marked, and he had a dark, florid
complexion. ' Not apprehending any difficulty,' says Nicholson, ' I
was desirous to try, and proposed to take a couple of sittings for a
head only. If that proved satisfactory I would paint a half-length.
This he agreed to. At the first sitting it was clear enough why he
never had a likeness from any of the thirteen, he being not only a
very bad sitter, but having a nervous twitching of the face like Mathews
the late professor of trickery. He would start up to object to this as
too dark, that too red, &c. In short he did everything except taking
the pencils from me and painting himself. I was now certain that
nothing could be done unless I bestowed upon him a very flattering
complexion. On my assurance that he should be perfectly satisfied,
he was prevailed upon to give me a second sitting. The likeness
having been got sufficiently to enable me to proceed with the half-
length, it was begun, and the head considerably advanced, before a
further sitting was required. He approved of the very nice complexion
given to him, and the work went on smoothly. When finished, it was
thought very like. He took every means to be satisfied that it was
so, by showing it to everybody who came to the house. I never heard
but one critical remark. It was from a man who said it was very
like, yet he thought there was something or other about the cheek
not quite right. The critic having been many years Captain Clarke's
barber and hairdresser, was doubtless a competent judge of that part.
Soon I had the pleasure of seeing it splendidly framed and hung in
his dining-room.' Another of Nicholson's sitters would hardly be
pleased. On seeing the work of the first sitting, he called out, ' Why,
154 THE FOUNDING OP THE SOCIETY BK. Ill
it squints ! ' 'I assured him,' says the painter, ' that he was mistaken,
and that it squinted no more than he did, which was true. It did not
squint half as much.'
In 1783, Nicholson, then thirty years of age, went to Whitby, with
the intention of staying there to get such employment as might be
offered. He had been induced to try the place by the Captain Clarke
above mentioned, who could be of service to him in that locality.
There he painted several portraits, and there he took unto himself a
wife. There too, at length, in the Mulgrave woods, his mind was
opened to the charms of picturesque scenery, and from that time he
became the Francis Nicholson known to students of water-colour
landscape. Recalling, in old age, the scenes wherein he then made for
Constantine, Lord Mulgrave, a collection of sketches of the ruins of
the old castle, the modern mansion, grounds, &c., he writes : ' The
place is very picturesque ; the old castle standing on an elevated ridge
having a deep ravine on each side well wooded, and about the bottom
rocky. Through the eastern dell a rivulet runs over a rocky bed,
dashing about very beautifully. At the end of this ravine is a corn
mill, and immediately below it a large and well-formed group of rocks,
all as they had fallen naturally, being far too massive to be placed arti-
ficially." Barret and Wilson would surely no longer have been
distasteful to him as reminders of the country.
At Whitby he works hard, beginning with the daylight, and sitting
sixteen hours a day, and many times a great part of the night.
Perhaps indeed his art would have been the better for more sketching
from nature, and less of midnight oil. But he has found his vocation
as a landscape draftsman, and is bent on securing a market for works
which he can produce in quick succession. There was not much to
be got from the Whitby public, but at Scarborough, ' during the spaw
season,' his drawings had a ready sale. And going several times to
London by sea, he found connections there also, and obtained
unlimited orders for as many drawings as he could furnish. The
shrewd Yorkshireman had a cunning way of keeping his wares in
request. ' My plan was,' said he, ' to have two strings to my bow,
being by that means independent ; and say to the country people,
" If you do not like what I have done, it is very well ; I can readily
dispose of it in London." There, on the other hand, I could at any
time say, " If you are not satisfied with what is offered, let it alone ;
it will be sold in the country.'" Nicholson had also at this time a
CH. HI NICHOLSON
'55
canny method of multiplying his works. ' For Scarborough,' he
writes, ' I manufactured an incredible number of drawings. My
process was by etching on a soft ground the different views of the
place, from which were taken impressions with black lead. This
produced outlines so perfectly like those done by the pencil, that it
was impossible to discover any difference. This was nearly half of
the work, and in the long days of summer I finished them at the rate
of six daily.1
After working thus at Whitby for nine years, during which we find
him beginning also, from 1789, to send drawings to the London
exhibitions, he made an excursion to Knaresborough, and was so
much delighted with the place that he determined to remove to it on
the next quarter day, and did so accordingly ; ' tenanting a house
which his pleasant description may serve to identify if it still exists.
It was, he says, ' in a most beautiful situation, the front facing the
river, and separated from it only by the breadth of the road. The
opposite bank of the river was rising ground and closely wooded
down to the water. Through this plantation a long gravelled walk was
formed from the upper [side ?] on the Harrowgate Road passing the
back of the dripping rock to the lower bridge. From this place, to
a public house said to have been the residence of the Yorkshire
sibyl Mother Shipton, a path was formed leading to the foot of the
rock. From the front of my house the view to the right was up the
river ; to the left, a high rock, most perpendicular, well wooded in the
parts about the bottom ; and upon the summit the ruins of the castle.
The only unsightly [object] in the view down the river was a huge
cotton mill, which in my drawings was always removed, and a former
old corn mill restored to its place. Probably,' he adds, ' it may be
down ere now, as we learn by the depression of trade the place is
nearly ruined, and that good houses may be had for next to nothing.'
Nicholson had good friends at Knaresborough, among whom he
mentions Dr. Garnet and Mr. Broadbelt, but no actual patrons. He
declared that, after staying there upwards of three years, spending
his money in the place, he had never received the value of a shilling
from any person in it in return. His market was at Harrogate.
He had three or four frames of drawings always on view in the
reading-room of the bookseller there. When a drawing was sold, it
was taken out of the frame and replaced by another. From Harro-
1 This would be about the year 1 792, when he was thirty-nine.
156 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
gate he had numerous visitors, sometimes three or four at his door in
the course of the morning, and several of them brought him employ-
ment.
Thus he became conspicuous enough to be worth stigmatizing for
his independence of character. Having refused, though called upon
by'two of the chief magistrates of the district, Sir Thomas Slingsby
and Justice Watson, to support a war of which he did not approve,
by subscribing for blankets for the Duke of York's army in Holland,
he was publicly denounced by the former as a ' rank Jacobin.' ' Being
no more a Jacobin,' he said, ' than Sir T. himself ; and knowing how
people of his caste were terrified by the name of a Jacobin, however
obscure, I was rather pleased than otherwise. I therefore had small
cause to care for them, from Sir T. down to the parish beadle.'
Nicholson's manner of drawing was now sufficiently known, and
his works were in such repute that it was thought worth a dealer's
while to pass off copies of them for originals, the supply thereof to
the metropolis not being equal to the demand. In or about 1793,
when he was residing at Knaresborough, a friend, Mr. Carr, a merchant
at Leeds, informed him that he had seen in a frame-maker's window
in London two or three palpable copies of drawings by him. On
Mr. Carr's remonstrating with the man who had exposed them for
sale, the dealer admitted that when the artist's original drawings were
sent to him to be framed, he set people to make copies of them. He
should be very glad, he said, to get originals ; but that Nicholson,
having come into possession of considerable property, now worked
very little. On another occasion, Nicholson himself was shown by
Archdeacon Markham at York a stranger's drawing, on a mount with
his own autograph at the back. His drawing had been removed by
some fraudulent person, and a copy substituted. Thus tricks of the
trade are not all of recent date.
It is not always, however, that a copy is inferior to the original.
Nicholson once saw in a shop window in Maddox Street a copy of a
drawing of his of the Dripping Rock at Knaresborough, which he
preferred to his own work, and would have bought had it been for
sale ; but it was only sent there to be framed. He describes it as
exactly similar, but richer and more highly finished in the details ; the
foreground plants in particular being made out so as to satisfy a
botanist, while the effect and breadth of every part were preserved.
Among the visitors from Harrogate came a distinguished patron,
CH. in NICHOLSON ,57
Lord Bute. Being at the time in great trouble on the death of his
eldest son, Lord Mountstuart, by a fall from his horse, he seems to
have found relief in quietly watching our artist at his easel. ' He
came,' says Nicholson, ' almost daily from thence in the morning, and,
sitting by me, was amused by seeing my work go forward, never
taking up my attention nor interrupting me in it. He usually stayed
through the day, until his dinner hour, when he returned to Harrow-
gate.' Finally Lord Bute took all the drawings done under his
inspection, and engaged Nicholson to go to the Isle of Bute and
make sketches of a set of views in various parts of the island. His
account of this trip must be related as nearly as possible in the artist's
own words : —
' My route to the island,' he writes, ' was made out for me. I was
to go to Glasgow ; from thence to Greenock, where I should get a
passage in a packet going daily to Bute.
' I was landed at Rothsay, the port of Bute, where I immediately
became an informer and reformer. On my arrival at Mountstuart,
Lord B. inquired if the journey had been pleasant. I told him : " It
was so until I got to Greenock, afterwards not so." On his asking
why it was not, I told him : " On engaging a passage from thence,
the captain directed me to be on board at two o'clock. In the mean-
time I made a sketch. I might have done more, for on going at the
appointed time, I found the vessel hard aground, and the captain
could not possibly sail at the time he appointed, or any other until
she floated, which was not before six. Upwards of twenty passengers
were on deck, where we were compelled to remain through the night.
There was no shelter of any kind, the vessel being filled with goods
up to the top of the companion ladder. However, we suffered
nothing, the night proving favourable." Lord Bute rang the bell, and
on the appearance of a servant, asked if -Mr. May (the steward) was
in the house. Being told he was, he desired to see him. He inquired
of Mr. May : " What share have I in the Rothsay packet ? " I
forget what the answer was ; but he told him to fit out another vessel
directly, for without competition the public could never be well
served.
' Lord Bute went with me about the island and port to select
subjects. At Rothsay he was pestered by apparently one of the
chief people, who solicited him for assistance towards the repair of
the pier, observing it would be a very pleasant walk whenever his
ijfc THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. in
lordship might come down to the port. His lordship looked very
gruff, and pointing out a long row of trees on the beach, with a shady
walk under the branches, replied as gruffly : " Do you think, while
there is such a place as that, I should be such a fool as to walk on a
bare and exposed stone wall ? " The man slunk back and looked
rather foolish.
' When I had made a number of sketches on the island, Lord
Bute had a revenue cutter brought up the Clyde to Mountstuart,
where we embarked, coasting and sketching among the other islands
in the Clyde. It then appeared that Lord Bute had another object
in view, which was to raise recruits for the Government. Being off
Arran, Mr. May went on shore, returning the next morning. He
told his lordship that he had been unsuccessful, and not able to
procure a single man. Lord Bute said : " Won't money tempt them ? "
" Not at all," was the answer, and that, to avoid compulsion, many of
the inhabitants were preparing to leave the country.'
Our artist had been greatly pleased with the scenery of Bute. He
found it to ' abound with subjects for the pencil ; always with grand
objects in the distance ; Goatfell, the wildest part of the Isle of
Arran, being only nine miles from Bute ; the forms very grand, and in
that climate so distinctly seen that the breadth of the water between
them seemed to be not more than two or three miles.'
Soon after his return from Scotland, Nicholson removed from
Knaresborough to Ripon, the scenery about which, with Studley
Royal and Fountains Abbey, seems to have had a special charm for
him.
There was a strolling company of comedians that used to make
their circuit in that part of the country, staying from six to eight
weeks at each station in succession, and Ripon was one of their
stations. Nicholson chanced to make acquaintance with one of the
musicians attached to the company, named William Tayleure ; and
finding that he was very fond of drawing, kindly told him that, as
he had all the day at his disposal, being wanted in the orchestra at
night only, he might, if he would apply himself diligently to the art,
not only have any of his own works to copy, but the benefit of all
the instruction he could give him. The offer was gladly accepted,
and Tayleure worked very closely in the two or three seasons during
which Nicholson continued to reside at Ripon. What became of
this aspirant will appear in the sequel.
CH. in NICHOLSON 159
From Ripon, Nicholson made excursions through Wensleydale
and the lesser dales opening into it on each side ; also to Swaledale,
Wharfedale, Malham, &c., and Brimham rocks. He had already
furnished a few drawings to the Walkers for their ' Copper Plate
Magazine,' the first of the plates from them being dated i Aug.
1792. Among them is a view of Ripon, published I Aug. 1793,
but this must have been executed while he still hailed from Knares-
borough.1
While residing at Knaresborough he had formed a valuable
acquaintance with Sir Henry and Lady Tuite, an Irish couple, who
were staying at Harrogate, having left their estate near Mullingar
in consequence of the disturbed state of West Meath. With
them he made the tour of the English Lakes, and for several
years passed a considerable time in various places, never idly, but
always working as at home. ' I was with them,' he says, ' about two
months at Bath ; in the next year a longer time at Clifton ; next
in Wimpole Street, London, and in the following year in Lower
Grosvenor Street.' Sir Henry he describes as an ardent pedestrian
when on his travels, and 'as kind-hearted a gentleman as ever
crossed the Irish Channel, exceedingly good-tempered, and at all
times the same.' Nicholson did not get on quite so well with her
ladyship, who induced him to remove to the neighbourhood of
London, and become tenant of a house and garden at Weybridge,
adjoining and included in a purchase which the Tuites had made
there for their own residence. The Nicholsons were to have it rent-
free, with mutton at cost price killed on the estate, and divers other
advantages. These privileges, however, either proved illusory or
were gradually withdrawn, and Nicholson after a while came to the
1 The following plates after Francis Nicholson are in Walker's Copper Plate Magazine:—
Plate 13. Greenwich Hospital, by W. & J. Walker, I Aug. 1792.
,, 22. Rivalx Abbey, by W. & J. Walker, i Dec. 1792.
„ 37. Rippon, by J. Walker, I Aug. 1793.
„ 49. Malton, by Walker & Storer, I Feb. 1794.
73. York, by Walker, I Feb. 1795.
112. Low Harrogate, by J. Walker, I Sep. 1796.
148. Dropping Well, by J. Walker, I March, 1798.
151. Edinburgh, by J. Walker, I May, 1798.
154. Stoke Gifford, by J. Walker, I June, 1798.
176. King's Weston, by J. Walker, I May, 1799.
1 80. Bristol, by J. Walker, I July, 1799.
1 88. Kirkstall Abbey, by J. Walker, I Nov. 1799.
202. Knaresborough, by J. Walker & J. Grieg, 2 June, 1800.
235. Castle Howard, by J. Walker, 2 Nov. 1801.
160 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. Ill
conclusion that he could live better and cheaper in London itself.
So he removed to Somers Town, and afterwards to No. 10 Titchficld
Street, where he had purchased the house in which we find him
residing at the time of the formation of the Water-Colour Society.
He was by that time settled in a good practice, and, like others of
his craft, he gave lessons to amateurs.
He was one of the draftsmen of his time who most aimed at
extending and strengthening the scope and power of water-colour
painting, in which endeavour his early practice in oil was no doubt
of service to him. His friend Smirke, whose ideas of water-colour
were limited to stained drawing, thought he was attempting too much,
and contended that it could never bear a comparison with oil. But
Nicholson thought otherwise. While engaged, as before mentioned,
in teaching drawing to Miss Smith,1 he suggested that, as his pupil
had made considerable progress, she might derive more advantage
from making copies of the excellent pictures in her father's gallery
than from such works as he himself could produce. ' Choose any
you like,' said Mr. Smith, agreeing to the proposal. Nicholson
selected ' Rembrandt's Mill.' ' Is it possible,' inquired the possessor,
' to produce by water-colours anything like the strength and depth
of that picture ? But if you like it try.' ' We did so,' said Nicholson,
'and when the copies were finished he was highly pleased, and
desirous that we should proceed on the plan by going on with
Wilson's " Celadon and Amelia," which was equally satisfactory to
him.' An attempt was afterwards made to steal Nicholson's copy
of the Rembrandt by a stranger, who, while the family were in the
country, called at Mr. Smith's house in Park Street on a pretended
commission from the artist to take it away. A similar trick had
been successful at a neighbour's house in Mayfair.
The method of giving force and an effect as of impasto to his high
lights, which was a characteristic part of Nicholson's practice,2 and
whereof an account, communicated by him, was published in the
Transactions of the Society of Arts in 1799, was employed by him
1 Mr. William Smith of Norwich, warmly aided Lord Dover in the formation of the
National Gallery. (Cunningham's Lives, vi. : Sir George Beaumont.)
2 One of the greatest difficulties at that time in producing richness of effect and clearness
of execution arose from the practice of laying (he lightest tint of a drawing as the first stage,
and thus deepening the parts by degrees. By the process of Nicholson, the darker colours
were laid first, next the forms destined to sustain the lights were taken out.' (Papworth
MS.)
en. in NICHOLSON 161
before he settled in London. That he had made some secret of the
process is shown by the following story, which he tells, of another
attempt at fraud. While staying with Sir Henry and Lady Tuite in
Grosvenor Square, he became acquainted with a drawing-master of
the name of Pierson, who often came to him, and seemed always
eager to do" him any service in his power, fetching and carrying for
him anything from or to any part of the town, and being frequently
with him while he was at work. ' I did not apprehend,' says Nicholson,
' that he would understand some parts of my practice, such as stopping
out the lights.' He was therefore left sometimes alone in the room,
when he took advantage of the opportunity of examining the artist's
materials, including his stopping-mixture, and then made an imitation
of his drawing, and took it to the Society of Arts, got a specification,
entered in his name in their books, and claimed a premium. Barry,
the Academician, ' ever,' says Nicholson, ' the bitter enemy of quacks
and jugglers of every description,' happening to be present when this
claim came on for adjudication, informed the meeting that he was
acquainted with the inventor, whose works were very different from
those produced by the present claimant, whom he proceeded to de-
nounce as an impostor. Judgment was therefore suspended until
Nicholson should have been informed of what had taken place. Our
artist, on hearing of it, went to the Adelphi and told Mr. More, the
secretary, that if the candidate was, as he suspected, William Pierson,
the man had stolen the little he knew from the informant. ' I am not
at liberty,' said the secretary, with official caution, ' to give you the
name ; but, to satisfy my own curiosity, I will look at the entry.' ' I
stood opposite,' says Nicholson. ' The entry was made in a large
round hand. I had no difficulty in reading upside down that " William
Pierson having by great labour and expense invented, &c." Mr.
More closed the book, saying, " Well, sir, if you are disposed to make
your claim, send in a specimen of your performance. You may depend
on having full justice done you." There was no competition, Pierson
having cut and run on the day of Barry's exposure.'
This was not, however, the only disciple of whom Nicholson had
reason to complain. We have seen how, when in Yorkshire, he played
off against one another his town and country customers ; and how,
when he was drawing for the Harrogate folk, and his works got scarce
in London, the town dealers, to sell their copies, fabricated a report
that he had come into an estate, and was giving up the brush. So,
M
162 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. nr
too, now that he had deserted the country market, and found his chief
patrons in town, a more injurious rumour was spread in Yorkshire
with a similar object. The story was that he had taken to drinking'
and that his works were very inferior to what he had done formerly.
Nicholson heard this report, and could not imagine how it had arisen ;
until one of his best friends, Colonel Machell, of Beverley, discovered
that, since he had left Yorkshire, the frames wherein he used to show
his drawings at the Harrogate library, which were marked with his
name, had been utilized by a rogue, who placed his own drawings
there, pretending that they came from Nicholson, and no doubt ex-
plaining their inferiority by the above ingenious fiction. This impostor
was his old pupil, William Tayleure. The ungrateful wretch was now
settled as a drawing-master at Beverley, where Colonel Machell had
been very kind and of great service to him. When Nicholson was on
a visit to the Colonel, he called upon his former pupil, and taking him
for a walk into the fields, charged him with his dishonesty. The
culprit turned pale as death, and when he had recovered the power of
speech, would have stammered out a denial. ' Don't attempt that,'
said Nicholson. ' My information is derived from Colonel Machell,
who has been your good friend as well as mine, and is incapable of
saying anything he cannot prove. However, to show you how little I
can be affected by such reports, having nothing to do with the country,
I am at my return to send some drawings to Colonel Machell, and will
desire that he will permit you to inspect them. I shall be glad if you
can derive any advantage from them.' He was so bitterly grieved
that Nicholson had not the heart to reproach him further. Finally,
the poor fellow himself took to drinking, lost the best part of his
employment, and died a few years afterwards.
It was while Nicholson resided in Titchfield Street, but before the
birth of the Water-Colour Society, that he was again brought into con-
tact with the Society of Arts, and became the means of checking a
system which showed that the drawing-masters by this time constituted
a somewhat powerful clique. The members of the Committee of
Polite Arts at the Adelphi, having hopelessly differed in opinion as to
the merits of the works sent in by candidates for the premiums offered
by the Society, agreed to refer the decision to an artist who had no
connexion with any of them ; and Nicholson was selected for that
purpose. He had already had some reason to suspect the purity of
this Committee's awards. Before this, when he was residing in Somcrs
Town, he had made several drawings for Barber, afterwards Barber-
CH. ill NICHOLSON 163
Beaumont, the miniature painter, with whom he was acquainted.
Barber ' advised me,' he says, ' to send a drawing by my eldest daughter
Sophia to the Society of Arts for a premium ; to which I objected
that she had not sufficient practice to have any chance of gaining one.
He replied, " I will assure her of that, being one of the Committee of
Polite Arts." I am persuaded,' adds Nicholson, ' that this juggling
practice has been carried on from the time when the Society first
offered premiums, to the present' At the time now referred to, the
whole of the Committee were drawing-masters, each of whom had a
natural partiality for the works of his own pupils. Unaware of this
Nicholson went to an evening meeting, and there observed what is
sufficiently stated in the following letter, which he wrote to the
Secretary, Mr. More, the next morning : ' Sir, — Having been re-
quested to attend the Committee of the Fine Arts, I did so yesterday.
The consideration of Mr. Marchant's report occupying the whole of
the evening, the subject on account of which I attended was not gone
into ; but I had an opportunity, by examining the drawings of the
candidates for premiums in the department of drawing, to observe that
the Society is subject to great imposition ; and of the worst tendency,
as it gives to young persons of real merit a very unfavourable and un-
fair trial, in opposition to those who are not ashamed to send in works
in which was little of their own. Having had the honour to be
favourably noticed by the Society on a former occasion, and at the
time had the pleasure of preventing the gross imposition of a fraudulent
claim upon it, feeling it as much my duty as it is my wish to expose
such attempts whenever it may be in my power, I trust this communi-
cation will not be deemed impertinent. It will rest with the Society
to devise some method of ascertaining whether the specimens given
in were really the works of the candidates, several of which I am con-
vinced in many of their parts they are not.' Nicholson received the
thanks of the Society, but was desired to substantiate his statement.
As the result might have been unpleasant in the absence of further
evidence than his own opinion, he called upon his brother draftsman,
John Varley, as having a more extensive acquaintance than any
other person he could apply to, and related the circumstances to him.
Varley, besides being an excellent artist, was a keen observer of men.
Taking a mental survey of the profession, he bethought him of a
popular teacher called Baynes.1 ' Baynes,' he said, ' has a great many
1 'James Baynes, water-colour painter, born at Kirkby Lonsdale, April 1766,
M 2
164 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
pupils. He's a poor nervous creature ; and I'll charge him so bluntly
that he will hardly attempt to evade my question.' And off he went
in search of the supposed culprit. ' Why, Baynes,' said he, when he
found him, 'you have got me into a sad hobble with the Society of
Arts. By some means they've discovered that some of the drawings
sent in by candidates were worked upon by you.' ' How could I
avoid it ? ' answered Baynes ; ' they were those of my pupils. Besides,
it is well known to be the practice of the masters.' Varley accom-
panied Nicholson to the Adelphi on the appointed morning. There
they found several of the members, with ' the Professor Barry ' among
them, and the whole of the Committee of the Fine Arts. ' Good
morning, Mr. Warren,' says Nicholson to the chairman. ' Humph ! '
was the answer, as the person addressed turned on his heel. He
accosted another with the same result. ' What can be the matter ? '
thought he, ' and why am I sent to Coventry ? ' The only question
asked was by Barry, who said, ' How do you know that these are not
the entire work of_ the candidates ? ' ' By the difference of the
handling,' answered Nicholson. ' The hand that did this could not
possibly do that. The first is evidently the work of a beginner. The
other shows a hand of great practice. It is useless,' added he, ' to
consider this as a matter of opinion. My friend Mr. Varley can prove
the truth of what I stated to the Society, and accompanies me here
for that purpose.' ' Having done that,' he adds, ' we returned home,
having no further business there.' ' I soon learned,' he continues, ' that
the whole of the Committee were to a man drawing-masters, and were
blown up sky high by my letter to Mr. More.' Soon afterwards a
resolution was entered on the Society's books requiring every candi-
date to give proof that the drawing sent in was entirely the production
of the claimant, by his being placed alone in a room and there making
a drawing or such parts of one as would satisfy the Society that the
claim was fair.1 ' This mode of trial,' observes Nicholson, ' is good, but
how is it to be carried into practice ? It is clear that a set of drawing-
masters are, of all others, the most unfit to decide, being themselves
interested. If a member of the Society were competent to do the
business it might work well, but no artist would undertake so trouble-
some and thankless an office.'
had several pupils who gained a name in art. He died 1837.' (Redgrave's
Dictionary.')
1 There are points in the foregoing recital that can scarcely fail to recall to the reader's
mind the evidence in a recent cause clKbre respecting the originality of certain works of
plastic art.
i65
CHAPTER IV
THE VARLEYS ; NATTES ; AND GILPIN
John Varley — A leader in the school — Cornelius Varley — Of scientific tastes — Their birth
and parentage — John's character and early life — At Barrow's school— Sketches with
Neale— Private theatricals — Tossed by a bull —Topographic tours and drawings — With
Dr. Monro — First studio and patrons — Early exhibits — Visits to Wales— Havell and
C. Varley's palette — J. Varley's first marriage — Addresses— -J. C. Natles — Topographic
draftsmen — Engraved works — W. S. Gilpin — Drawing-master — Birth and family—
Sawrey Gilpin, R.A. — Rev. W. Gilpin.
THE JOHN VARLEY who came to Nicholson's aid in effecting the
above-mentioned exposure, was also one of his coadjutors in the
scheme now afoot for a water-colour exhibition. He was about half
the age of our Yorkshire painter, but was already established in
London as a water-colour draftsman of good repute. He lived and
painted during the forty years next to come, and was destined to be
regarded as a leading member of the school, and to furnish moreover,
in the soundness of his teaching, the very backbone of its landscape
art. At present we are concerned with his earlier life only, to the
time when, in 1804, he and his younger brother, CORNELIUS VARLEY,
came forward as two more of the six recruits who joined the new
movement.
The scientific tastes of the latter, as well as the philosophic way
in which the former dealt with the methods of his art, prepare us to
learn that these artists came of intellectual parentage. Their father,
Richard Varley, ' the first though the younger of the Varleys who
came from Epworth in Lincolnshire,' ' was at one time settled in
Yorkshire, where he married and had two sons ; but his wife dying,
and his circumstances not being prosperous, he travelled to London,
leaving these two children in the care of his wife's family. Redgrave
in the Dictionary calls him ' a man of very scientific attainments,' and
states that he 'became tutor to Lord Stanhope's son.' But this
account seems rather to belong to his elder brother, Samuel Varley,
1 Letter from Cornelius Varley, 10 Dec. 1842. J. J. J. MSS. Epworth appears by the
maps to be really in Notts, about three miles from the border of Lincoln.
166 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
who, as he tells us, was a ' manufacturer of philosophical instruments
and apparatus,' and who, though ' a self-taught man, became the leader
and lecturer of a society for the investigation of natural science, of
which Josiah Wedgwood and other distinguished men were members.'1
John Varley was one of a family of five, three boys and two girls,
all born in a large house, where their father resided, at Hackney,
abutting on the churchyard. John's birthday was the i/th of August,
1778, and Cornelius's the 2ist of November, 1781. So the one was
twenty-six, and the other twenty-three, in the eventful year 1804.
John, from his infancy, was fonder of drawing than of any other
occupation. He was distinguished among his schoolfellows, not only
by possessing this talent, but by a degree of muscular strength which
exceeded that of nearly all other lads of his age. ' The latter qualifi-
cation gained him both friends and enemies, for he could never see a
boy tormented or oppressed by another without interfering, and with
all the ardent generosity of an amiable disposition and great courage
would fight any boy of his acquaintance in the cause of justice, no
matter how much older or stronger than himself. The consequence
was that iu a short time scarce any in the neighbourhood would
fight him alone ; and once, when, upon some trifling occasion which
produced a quarrel, three attacked him at once, he maintained the un-
equal combat for several minutes, and declined any interference, till
the lookers-on insisted on rescuing him. He then fought his three
antagonists singly and punished them all.' *
Young Varley's father, like Nicholson's, would not hear of his
following his natural inclination. Limning, he said, was a bad trade,
and none of his children should be artists. But ' 1'homme propose
et Dieu dispose." All his sons in after years took to the brush ; for
the third, William Fleetwood Varley, born in 1785, also followed
the arts, with less of the ability, but all the enthusiasm, of his elder
brothers. Their sister Elizabeth, too, married the painter Mulready ;
and the family name and talent have been and continue to be repre-
sented in younger generations. Under his father's mandate, John
was accordingly placed, at the age of thirteen, with a silversmith, on
trial for an apprenticeship. But before the son could be bound
apprentice, the father died, on the I7th of November, 1791.
After this event, the family seem to have gone down in the world,
1 Illustrated London News, 25 Oct. 1873. Obituary notice of Cornelius Varley.
2 Manuscript lent by the late Edgar J. Varley, John Varley's grandson.
CH. IV THE VARLEYS ; NATTES ; AND GILPIN 167
for instead of their remaining in the large house at Hackney, we
find John Varley residing, a few years later, with his widowed mother
and his brothers and sisters, in an obscure court, opposite St. Luke's
Hospital, in Old Street There is a story that, when still a boy, he
was engaged by a stockbroker named Trower to clean and sweep out
his office. This Mr. Trower was in the habit of sketching on scraps
of paper, and throwing them on the ground. Young Varley took to
copying some of these. By some chance a copy came to the sight of
his employer, who told the boy it was so well done, that he had
better take to drawing. And ever after Mr. Trower and his family
assisted Varley.
For a short time after his father's death, John Varley was placed
with a law stationer. It seemed, however, quite impossible that he
could accustom himself to the regular drudgery of any such occupa-
tion, and, one fine morning, having expended his slender stock of
money in paper and pencils, with the exception of three halfpence,
he set off on his first sketching excursion. His mother saw nothing
of him for some days, when he returned, with sketches of Hampstead
and Highgate, absolutely driven home by hunger.1 ' Mrs. Varley,
who had more taste for the arts than her husband, regretted that her
son's inclination had been so long opposed, and now encouraged him
to draw and study, and gave him all the assistance her humble means
permitted.' 2 Thus left at liberty, the youth resolved to support him-
self by his pencil if he could. With determined industry he set to
work at drawing whatever came in his way, copying figures, making
sketches of animals, and exhibiting a self-acquired ability which
delighted his friends and acquaintances, some of whom encouraged
him to design subjects also, by making an occasional purchase. As
he was always drawing, his mother used to say, ' When Johnny
marries, it will be to a paper wife.'
Eager for practice and instruction, he got some employment, for
a while, with a portrait painter in Holborn ; and, at the age of fifteen
or sixteen, he succeeded in placing himself with a teacher of the
name of Joseph Charles Barrow, who had an evening drawing-school
twice a week at his house at No. 12 Furnival's Inn Court, Holborn.
1 Cornelius Varley. MS. The late Mr. E. J. Varley had a water- colour drawing by his
grandfather, partly washed, and partly in local colour, of a waggon and some houses at Cam«
bridge ; and it has been conjectured that he may have got so far and made this study during
a truant trip.
* Cornelius Varley. MS.
168 THE FOUNDING OK THE SOCIETY UK. II
Varley was to make himself generally useful, not only during the
hours of study, as a lower kind of assistant, but also as an errand
boy and otherwise at odd times. In return, he had the advantage
of drawing with the other pupils, and he was moreover furnished
with prints from which he studied, and encouraged to draw from
nature. Francia, one of Girtin's fellow-sketchers, was, as above men-
tioned, an assistant here also ; but in a higher capacity than that
of John Varley.
' Poor Varley,' writes one who knew him well at this time, ' began
the world with tattered clothes, and shoes tied with string to keep
them on. Yet nothing,' he adds, ' could damp the ardour of this
determined, great man. He was ever with his pencil, either drawing
from nature, or copying the works of distinguished masters. He rose
early, drew till it was time to attend his situation, and set off with a
large ragged portfolio, and a string over his shoulder attached to it
head first, at a full trot until he arrived at his master's.' ' So great an
enthusiast I never, in the whole of my long practice, beheld.'
The writer of the above was John Preston Neale, a fellow-artist,
who, though about seven years his senior, did not take to the
profession himself until a later period. He is best known as an archi-
tectural topographic draftsman for engraved works.1 Neale ' began
life as a clerk in the Post-Omce,' 2 but seems to have spent his leisure
in the pursuit of tastes inherited from his father, who painted insects,
'It was early in March 1796,' he writes, 'that I went on Sunday
morning to Hornsey wood to sketch and to collect insects.' There
he met with John Varley, sketching likewise. They entered into
conversation, and so commenced a friendly intercourse, which lasted
during their joint lives.
Thus thrown together, they became frequent companions. Neale,
however, could not inoculate Varley with his taste for entomology,
the energies of the latter being otherwise directed. But he persuaded
him to join in a project for a work on natural history, of ambitious
dimensions. It was to be in royal quarto, and they called it the
Picturesque Cabinet of Nature. It was to consist of landscapes,
beasts, birds, insects, flowers, &c., &c. Varley was to make all the
1 He made drawings for the following works : History and Antiquities of the Abbey
Church at Westminster (1818-23), Views of the most interesting Collegiate and Parochial
Clntrches (1824-25), Views of the Scats of the Nobility and Gentry of the United Kingdom
(1st series, 1822-24, 2n(l series, 1829). He died in 1847, aged 76. (Redgrave's Dictionary.}
2 Redgrave.
CH. IV THE VARLEYS ; NATTES ; AND GILPIN 169
landscape drawings ; and Neale to etch them, as well as to make all
the others and colour the plates. The first number was produced,
and consisted of three prints, horses, cows, and an ass. It was
published on the 1st of September, 1796. But we hear nothing of
No. 2, or of any landscape by Varley.
Neale gives the following graphic description of one of his
sketching excursions with his young companion in this same year.
It was on a fine Sunday morning in the spring of 1796, that John
Varley and he sallied forth in search of the picturesque. ' About 7
A.M. we reached the private Mad-house at Hoxton, and as the foliage
was beautiful round its banks, we sat down to copy their beauties.
We had been seated but a short period, when we began to frighten
each other by tales regarding the unhappy persons confined within
this sad abode. Suddenly a terrible rush was heard among the trees
and bushes. Having previously raised our fears to highest pitch, we
stayed not to inquire the cause ; but scrambling up, made a precipitate
retreat to the middle of the field, where we stopped to watch the
supposed maniacs that were making their escape. We discovered our
mistake ; the noise being occasioned by some men, who were robbing
the garden, falling from a tree, and who were equally surprised with
ourselves, supposing us placed there to watch their movements.
Having been thus satisfied, we resumed our seats, finished our
sketches, and proceeded to Tottenham, where we commenced sketching
the church, I taking my station by the side of a table monument, and
Varley close to me. To give my friends some idea of our feelings at
this time as young artists, it will be only necessary to state, that we
saw the people going to public worship : in the morning, in the
afternoon, and in the evening, they found us there. So exact were
our notions, that in colouring my sketch I copied the colours and
even counted the bricks, minutely attending to every other particular.
During the day we subsisted upon a crust of bread, and water, the
latter of which we obtained from a neighbouring pump. On another
occasion we drew and coloured, with much labour and fatigue, Stoke
Newington Church. The colouring of my sketch,' he adds with
pardonable pride, ' Varley has often referred to in later life as producing
something very good.'
Neale often visited John Varley at his mother's humble abode ;
and once they got up a private play, hiring a room for the purpose
at the corner of her court, in Old Street. Canvas, and a variety
1 7o THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ni
of things necessary for the performance, were bought, and Varley and
he set about painting the scenes. They had vast trouble, he tells us,
to produce the proper effect where an oval looking-glass was repre-
sented between two windows. The pieces were ' George Barnwell '
and ' Miss in her Teens ; ' and the following was the cast :—
For George Barmvell
George B. . . J. P. Neale
Freeman . . T. Bridges
F"or Miss in her Teens
Billy Fribble . J. P. Neale
Major . . W. Ashton
Miss in her Teens Miss Ashton
Uncle . . . W. Ashton
Blunt. V . J. Varley
Milwood . .Miss Ashton
Lucy . . . Miss Varley
The performances, as usual, went off with great applause ; but the
subscriptions fell short of expectation and also of expenses. Neale
had to endure much dunning from the landlady for her two guineas
charged for the room ; and the theatre was broken up.
About this time John Varley was attacked, in ' Old Broad Street
Road,' and tossed, by a bull, and much hurt. When, in after life, he
turned, as is well known, so much of his attention to astrology, he
declared that this was one of the casualties to which he had been
specially liable from his nativity. It is to be presumed that the
constellation Taurus had something to do with it.
His teacher, Barrow, must have thought well of Varley's talent,
for he took him to Peterborough on a sketching expedition. The
result was that the pupil made so excellent a view of the cathedral,
that the master was lost sight of, and young Varley, on the strength
of it, regarded as the artist who was sure to succeed. The ' View of
Peterborough Cathedral ' which thus brought him into notice was
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1798. It was a finished pencil-
drawing made by him after his return, from sketches on the spot.
He now began to make acquaintances among successful members
of his profession, and patrons of art, and rapidly advanced in his
practice as a landscape draftsman. In 1798 or 1799 he travelled in
North Wales with George Arnald (afterwards A.R.A.), a landscape
painter of merit ; and, either at the same time or separately, with
the drawing-master Baynes, whose cleverness in embellishing his
pupil's works we have already been made acquainted with. His first
tour in Wales, a pedestrian one, was the foundation of his fame. He
CH. IV THE VARLEYS ; NATTES ; AND GILPIN * 171
then first beheld the class of subjects that had the greatest attraction
for him, and to the end of his life chiefly inspired the landscape com-
positions for which he became celebrated.
It was at this time that his talent attracted the admiration of Dr.
Monro, who, in 1799 or 1800, took him to his country house at Fetcham
to make coloured sketches in the neighbourhood, particularly about
Box Hill. He was also one of the class of students that met at the
Doctor's in Adelphi Terrace,1 and, being three years or so younger
than Girtin and Turner, must have come fully within the influence of
their great example. For the advantage of being near this valued
seat of art learning, John Varley, at Dr. Monro's suggestion, came, in
the year 1800, that of Girtin's marriage, into that painter's old familiar
neighbourhood, and took up his abode with his brother Cornelius, in
Charles Street, Covent Garden.2 Cornelius had been living with his
uncle Samuel, the instrument maker. But when he joined his brother,
he commenced the study of art under his guidance. Here the good
Doctor visited John Varley, was delighted with his progress, in which
he took great interest, standing by while he drew, and dictating the
tints he should use. Girtin's patrons, the Earl of Essex and ' Prince '
Lascelles, also patronized Varley, and visited him in his new studio.
The Messrs. Redgrave say3 that he made another visit to Wales
in this year, 1800. He had followed up the success of his first drawing
at Somerset House by exhibiting four works there in 1799, and from
that time till 1804, when he became a member of the 'old' (then
new) Society, he had from three to six on the walls yearly. They
were mostly views in Wales. That of Cader Idris, at the South
Kensington Museum, in the early tinted manner, is very likely one
which hung in the ' Anti-Room ' in 1801. A few topographic plates
of these early dates bear the name of J. Varley, as : ' Valle Crucis
Abbey' (1800), 'Stilton' (i Dec., 1800), 'Monmouth' (1801), all
engraved by J. Walker ; and ' Chepstow ' ( 1 801 ), in Beauties of England
and Wales, xi. 175. He also began to take pupils. In 1801 Mrs.
Schutz, to whose daughters he had given lessons, invited the two
Varleys to her house at Gillingham in Norfolk. Cornelius remained
1 Redgrave's Century, \. 493.
' This is stated on the written authority of Cornelius Varley himself. But John Varley's
address in the Royal Academy Catalogue of 1800 is 33 Craven Street, Hoxton, and in those
from 1801 to 1804 is z Harris Place, Pantheon, Oxford Street. That in 1799 is 12 FurnivaPs
Inn Court ; that is to say, at Barrow's.
3 Ul'i supra.
172 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
there, and in the same year made sketches in Suffolk, of churches
and gentlemen's residences.1 John went also to the Earl of Essex's
at Hampton Court, Hertfordshire. About this time he made the
acquaintance of Wilson Lowry, the mechanical engraver, a man of
varied scientific attainments, whose daughter afterwards became the
painter's second wife.
In 1802 he visited North Wales again, in company with Cornelius,
and with Thomas Webster, the architect of the lecture-room at the
Royal Institution.2 There they fell in with several brother artists,
Joshua Cristall and young William Havell among the number, both
to become distinguished members of the Water-Colour Society. At
Dolgelly, where they met the latter, they also encountered a large
party, comprising Mr. and Mrs. Lovvry, Arthur Aikin and his sister
Lucy the historian, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Donovan, who were making
a geological tour through North Wales. In the next year, 1803,
Cornelius Varley also began to exhibit drawings at Somerset House ;
and he went off to Wales again with Cristall, and made many
drawings there. They met Havell at Ross, and the three pursued
their journey together. While sketching in the market-place Varley
excited Havell's envy by using a sheet of ass's skin for a palette.
The latter, being burdened with the weight of an earthen palette, was
charmed with the lightness of his friend's contrivance. Varley
thereupon pulled out another sheet and gave it to him. This so
delighted Havell that he stuck his earthen palette up in the market-
place and pelted it with stones until he had broken it to pieces,
much to the amusement of a crowd of spectators.3 John Varley
never made a sketching tour with Havell. He went that year into
Yorkshire and Northumberland, and is said to have gone also about
this time to Devonshire and to other parts of England.4
In the same year, 1803, he married his first wife, whose maiden
name was Gisborne. One of her sisters became the wife of Copley
Fielding, and another of Muzio Clementi, of musical celebrity.
Such were the antecedents of John and Cornelius Varley prior
to their joining in the movement of the water-colour painters for a
1 Some of the sketches of this year were sold by Christie, 15 July, 1875, among his
remaining works after his death.
2 Among the drawings sold after C. Varley's death was a ' Design made for the Royal
Institution.' (Lot 146.)
3 J. J. J. MS. ex relatione C. Varley. 4 Art Union, January 1843.
CH. IV THE VARLEYS; NATTES ; AND GILPIN 173
gallery of their own. The address of John Varley given in the first
of the Society's catalogues is 1 5 Broad Street, Golden Square, and
that of Cornelius Varley, 6 Hanover Street, Hanover Square.
Two of the six recruits remain to be accounted for. They were
/ C. Nattes and W. S. Gilpin.
JOHN CLAUDE NATTES was a topographic draftsman, who
worked in the tinted manner, had exhibited at the Royal Academy
since 1782, and was engaged in the production of the following
series of works, for which he travelled and made sketches : Versailles,
Paris, et St.-Denis, folio, forty coloured aquatints chiefly by J. Hill,
dated 1804 to 1809; Hibernia Depicta, 1802; Scotia Depicta, obi.
4to, fifty etchings by Jas. Fittler, A.R.A., dated 1801 to 1804 ; Select
Views of Bath, Bristol, Malvern, Cheltenham, and Weymouth, \ 805 ;
Bath and its Environs Illustrated, folio, thirty coloured aquatints by
J. Hill, dated 1804, 1805. In the Beauties of England and Wales
there are ' Durham Cathedral ' (frontispiece) and ' View in New-
castle,' drawn by J. R. Thompson and J. C. Smith after sketches by
J. C. Nattes.
He is said by Redgrave to have been born in England about
1765, and to have been pupil of an Irish landscape-painter of no
great character called Hugh Primrose Neale, who spent much of his
time in Italy, enjoyed the sobriquet of the ' Irish Claude,' ' as well as
the patronage of Lord Palmerston (until he lost the latter by mis-
conduct), and after turning Methodist preacher, died about 1784,
Nattes's address was No. 5 Woodstock Street, Bond Street.
It was more by his connexion with art than by his ability as a
draftsman that WILLIAM SAWRY GILPIN came to be welcomed as
an adherent to the cause. Up to this time we find only one ex-
hibited work of his, namely a ' Park Scene ' at the Royal Academy in
1800. But he was in great practice as a drawing-master, for which,
according to Nicholson, he was not a little indebted to his name
and family influence, through which he had formed an extensive
connexion.
He was descended from Bernard Gilpin, the divine. His father
was Sawrey * Gilpin, an animal painter of much repute in his day,
1 Whether the son's baptismal name was hence derived is matter for conjecture.
2 In Watts's Views there is one of ' Broughton Tower, Lancashire, the seat of John
Gilpin Sawrey, Esq.'
I74 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. in
who came from Carlisle, had been patronized by the Duke of
Cumberland in the old days of the Sandbys, had been president of
the Incorporated Society, and in 1797 been made a full member
of the Royal Academy, where he had exhibited since 1786. The
son, William Sawrey Gilpin, was born in 1762.
More closely associated- with the branch of art professed by the
son is the name of his uncle, the Rev. William Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre
in the New Forest, an amateur artist well known for his many
writings on the theory and characteristics of landscape and pic-
turesque beauty, generally illustrated with slight aquatinted sketches
by his own hand, some, however, being by his brother the R.A.
His original sketches were sold by him at Christie's in 1802 for the
endowment of his parish school, and fetched i,S6o/. William Gilpin's
writings,1 judging by their sale, were popular in his day, and no
doubt contributed to the more generalized study of the picturesque,
which at the end of the last century was rapidly superseding the
taste for dry topography, and was in a great measure due to the
awakened interest of amateurs like Gilpin in landscape art. In 1804,
before the younger Gilpin, in whose Christian name his father's and
uncle's were united, joined our embryo Society, William Gilpin in
his eightieth year had joined the great majority, and Sawrey Gilpin
had just attained the age of seventy.
1 The following is believed to be a nearly complete list of William Gilpin's works :
Tour down the Wye, 1782 (another edition, 1789). Northern Tour, 2 vols., 1788.
Scottish Tottr, 2 vols., 1789 (another edition, 1792). Forest Scenery, 2 vols., 1791 (other
editions, 1794 and 1879). An Essay on Prints, with Accounts of Engravers, 8vo, 1792.
Essay on Picturesqtie Beauty, j 794. Western Tour, 1 798. (Sale Catalogue of Drawings,
1802.) The following were published after his death: Southern Tour, 1804. Essay on
Sketching, 1804. Eastern Tour, 1809. Practical Illustration of the Day, representing
various effects of Landscape Scenery, from Morning till Night, 30 plates, coloured like the
original drawings, roy. 410, 1811.
'75
CHAPTER V
THE SOCIETY FOUNDED — BARRET AND CRISTALL
Meeting at Stratford Coffee-house — The Society as first founded — Gilpin first president —Six
more members — George Barret — Birth and parentage — Early works — Exhibits at the Royal
Academy — Morning and evening effects — Frugal industry— -Joshua Cristall — Classic taste
— Birth, parentage, and early life— At Rotherhithe — Taste for poetry fostered by mother
— At Blackheath— Pollard of Morden and his Virgil— Father's opposition — At Mr.
Ewson's — Refuses china trade — At Turner's factory, Brosely — Mary Wollstonecraft —
Father ruined — Tries china-painting — Hard life— Finds a home at Mr. Clayton's— Print-
works at Old Ford — Short rations — Lives with sister — Tries engraving — Student at
the Royal Academy — Walk to Rome proposed — Practises water-colours — At Dr. Monro's
— Early works — Paints on a panorama — George Dyer — Sketching tours — Adventure with
Welsh miners — Exhibits at the Royal Academy — Addresses.
THESE ten water-colour painters, Wells, Shelley, Hills, and Pyne
(the four original conspirators), with Pocock, Nicholson, the two
Varleys, Nattes, and Gilpin, met together at the Stratford Coffee-
house in Oxford Street, on the 3Oth of November, 1804, and there
and then united themselves into an associated body, drew up a set
of rules, and formally assumed the title of THE SOCIETY OF
PAINTERS ! IN WATER-COLOURS. It was to consist of ' no more
than twenty-four members.' They must be of ' moral character ' 2 and
' professional reputation,' and ' resident in the United Kingdom.' For
the direction of its affairs a president and other officers were to be
elected annually ; and there was to be a committee, with the secretary
as an ex-officio member, the remaining seats being filled by all the
members of the Society in succession. Out of the profits of the
exhibition, should there be any after payment of expenses, a sum was
to be set apart for expenses of the following year, and the residue
divided among the members in sums proportioned to the drawings sent
1 It had been a question among the founders, says Pyne (Somerset House Gazette, ii. 45),
' whether the novel term painters in water-colours might not be considered by the world of
taste to savour of assumption.'
2 In the Royal Academy the instrument of institution also required its members to be
'men of fair moral character' as well as artists of distinction. (Sandby's Hist. R.A.,
\. 281-2 ; and see ii. 36.)
176 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
and retained for exhibition. It is important to bear in mind this
last provision.
They then proceeded to elect officers for the ensuing year.
Gilpin's position and connexions seemed to confer upon him a
special qualification for that of president, and he was accordingly
installed in the chair. Shelley was made treasurer, and Hills secretary,
The first committee-men were Nicholson, Pocock, Pyne, and Wells ;
and Nattes and the two Varleys remained to represent the body of
the Society. It was not, however, long, when the Society had thus
assumed a definite shape, before the number of ordinary members
was augmented by the addition of the following six, most of whom
were artists of great merit and distinction. They were George Barret,
Joshua Cristall, John Glover, William Havell, James Hohvorthy,
and Stephen Francis Rigaud. The above-named sixteen members
constituted the Society at the date of its first exhibition in 1805.
Before assigning to them their due rank therein, what is known
of the respective antecedents and previous standing in the pro-
fession of the last-mentioned six artists must first be related.
Something has already been told of the early surroundings of
GEORGE BARRET ; how his father was one of the founders of the
Royal Academy, as he himself was one of the first members of the
Water-Colour Society ; and how, being a landscape painter himself,
with a strong feeling for English rural scenery, he was qualified to
transmit to his son a valuable inheritance of art-training. It was all
the wealth he could leave him. Imprudent in money matters, he
became insolvent, and died in 1784, leaving a widow ' and a large
family wholly unprovided for. George was born in 1767 (or the
beginning of the year after) in Orchard Street, Oxford Street, where
his father then resided. About ten years before the elder Barret's death,
the family removed to Westbourne Green, Paddington,2 then quite a
rural place, to get purer air, as the father suffered from asthma.
George Barret was about seventeen when he and his brothers and
sisters were left orphans, and had to support themselves by their
own exertions. Two of them, besides himself, took to the practice of
1 A pension of y>l. a year was awarded by the Royal Academy to Barret's widow in
1802. (Sandby's History of the Royal Academy, \. 262.)
2 In an appeal on behalf of the younger Barret's family, issued after his death, as an
advertisement in the Art Union for June 1842, there occurs a statement that his early days
were passed at the Manor House, Paddington, ' the residence of Barret's father in his
prosperity.' See, infra, a reference to this house in connection with the life of Cristall.
CH. v THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 177
art. James Barret exhibited landscapes in water and body colours,
occasionally at Somerset House, between 1785 and 1800. And Miss
M. Barret became a miniature painter, exhibited there in 1797-1799,
and, a quarter of a century after, joined the Water-Colour Society.
But George was by far the most distinguished for artistic talent.
Little seems to be known of his professional progress in these
early years. He must have had, as he had more or less through life,
a hard task to support himself by his pencil, before the appearance of
his first exhibited work, which seems to have been in 1800,' when he
was already about thirty-two years of age. In that year he had at
the Academy ' A Rocky Scene ' and ' Morning.'
To the class of subjects indicated in the latter title he was always
partial. He used to say that he gained more by studying in the early
morning and the evening than at any other time. His habit was to
go to the same spot and watch the sunrise, morning after morning,
making slight memoranda. He used to wait until the effect appeared
that suited him, and go to the same sketch over and over again at the
same hour on different days, working only as long as the particular
effect lasted, under which he had commenced his study.2 This mode
of practice he continued through life, and the titles of his works show
how long and how fondly he adhered to his favourite aspect of nature.
Pyne, when mentioning, in 1824, a drawing in his possession of a
'Wood Scene,' by Barret, executed about 1799, writes as follows:
' We have watched the progress of this artist, we may almost say step
by step, from the period when he commenced his career. Mr. Barret
began early to study from nature, and to copy trees, banks, weeds,
&c., with careful identity. His early coloured drawings were simple
in effect, and chaste in colouring.'3
Unlike his father, the younger George Barret appears to have been
a man of simple tastes, and frugal in his habits, while he was also
industrious and devoted to his art. But he made so modest an
estimate of the value of his own work, that he was always poor.
In 1801 and 1802 Barret again had one or two works at Somerset
1 Graves's list and Redgrave's Dictionary. The following pictures, of earlier date, are,
however, attributed to him in the Century of Painters, i. 489, exhibited in 1795 : 'Gentle-
man's Seat in Yorkshire;' ' Scene on Loch Lomond;' — in 1796: 'Lord Grantley's Seat
(horses by Sawrey Gilpin) ; ' ' Scene in the Highlands (with portraits by Reinagle and
horses by Gilpin).' The subjects would have pointed rather to the authorship of Barret,
R. A. , had he not been dead more than ten years.
* J. J. J. ex rdatione Dorrell. ' Somerset House Gazette, ii. 47.
N
i;8 THE FOUiNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
House ; but otherwise his name does not appear in exhibition
catalogues until the Water-Colour Society opened its gallery.
JOSHUA CRISTALL was another artist of refined quality who joined
the Society at its commencement. Barret and he were nearly of an
age ; and he, like Barret, was little known to the public by exhibited
works. One drawing only had he had at Somerset House, a portrait,
hung in the Library in 1803, and not likely to have attracted much
attention.1 But, like Barret too, he possessed that high sense of ideal
beauty to which has been given, perhaps too exclusively, the name of
classic taste.2 And, like him, he combined a gentle simplicity of
character with an earnest love of his art.
Cristall was essentially a figure painter, though he excelled too in
the combination of figures with landscape. In this, and in his choice
of poetic subjects, as well as in his style of treating those of a more
familiar kind, he was somewhat of an anomaly in the water-colour
school. ' There was perceptible in his early designs,' says Pyne, ' a
largeness of parts, and a greatness of execution, that called for more
powerful space for the display of such rare excellences than the
limited scope of water-colours could afford ; unless, indeed, he had been
sufficiently adventurous to have revived the art of body-colours, and
attempted designs on the magnificent scale of the celebrated cartoons.
We never recur,' observes the same writer, ' to the works of this classic
genius, but we regret that he did not originally direct his fine talents
for composition to the profession of sculpture, or to painting in oil.' *
But the circumstances of poor Cristall's life were such as to leave him
a very narrow choice as to his branch of the profession. He had to
struggle, not only with want of means and connexion, but against the
opposition of parents and friends ; and the years which should have
been devoted to his training in art were expended in the endeavour
to obtain the education he needed. Being thus deprived of the advan-
tage of early instruction and practice, he was constrained to acquire the
mechanical parts of his art, at a time of life when he ought to have
been engaged in applying them. Never, to the end of his days, did
he feel the confidence due to a complete technical mastery of his craft.
1 No. 746. Portrait of Mr. G. Adams.
2 Since justness of proportion, in relations of form and quantity, is the leading aim of
the so-called ' classic ' style, the mathematician might, one would think, put in as fair a
claim as the scholar's to a share in the nomenclature.
' Somerset House Gazette, i. 195.
CH. v THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 179
Cristall was a son of a Scotch sea-captain, ' Joseph Alexander
Cristall, an Arbroath man,' ' who before the artist's birth had hailed
from Cornwall. There he married a widow of Penzance, who in
course of time, and in addition to one ' incumbrance ' by her former
husband,2 presented him with three sons and two daughters, not too
amply provided for. Joshua is said to have been born in 1767? either
at Camborne in Cornwall, or, according to another account, in the
heart of London city, not far from the shadow of Aldgate Pump.
Be that as it may, his parents lived at Rotherhithe 4 during part at
least of his early boyhood. The father, much at sea, trading princi-
pally to Turkey, though he had at one time and another been all
over the world, left the children's education chiefly in their mother's
hands. It was well that he did so, for she paid the school fees out
of a small separate income of her own, which appears to have been
a bone of contention between husband and wife. The father was
of an extremely jealous disposition, and his time ashore was usually
a period of trouble and discomfort in the family. Besides this, the
mother was a capable person, of a nature befitting her Cornish
descent — strong, quick, active, and persevering, and, moreover, a
woman of education and taste. Some of the above qualities were
transmitted to two at least of her children — the boy Joshua and the
elder girl.5 Both were remarkable for natural talent, quick per-
ception, and great perseverance, as well as for good taste and
refinement of feeling. Cristall in after life seldom spoke of his
father, but described his mother as a ' strong-minded woman.' And
he was particularly attached to his elder sister. They studied
together as children, and hand in hand did they daily walk to London
and back for their schooling when the family lived at Rotherhithe.
1 Dictionary of National Biography.
2 J. J. J. MSS. ex relations Miss E. Cristall. Messrs. Redgrave (Century of Painters,
i. 508) say that she was a daughter of Mr. John Batten, a merchant of Penzance ; and Mr.
W. H. Tregellas (Diet. Nat. Biog.) states that her name was Ann Batten Cristall, and that
she was born in 1745 ; but neither mentions a previous marriage.
3 Biographers concur in giving this date. But Cristall himself, in a letter in August
1839, writes that he has then 'commenced his 7 1st year,' which would seem to place his
birth in 1769.
1 Mr. Tregellas (itlii supra") believes that, besides being owner of a trading vessel, J. A.
Cristall was ' a shipbreaker, having yards at Rotherhithe, Penzance, and Fowey.' In the
New Annual Directory 1800, and the Post Office Directory 1806, we find the name and
address ' Alexander Cristall, Sail, Mast, & Block-maker, 297 Rotherhithe.'
5 Mr. Tregellas (ubi supra} tells us that she wrote some Poetical Sketches, published in
1795, and that both she and her sister were engaged in tuition.
N 2
iSo THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
The artist showed his natural bent in very early days, even when
he was still ' in petticoats. He used his mother's scissors to cut out
the objects around him in paper, which induced her to furnish him
with a pencil, and he used it to aid his amusements. When he was
taken to the theatre he remembered the scenes and copied them, to
act them over again ; and thus on all occasions, for pleasure, the
pencil was resorted to.' ' His scanty pocket money went to purchase
Spanish liquorice, which he employed as a water-colour to adorn
the whitewash of his bedroom walls with spirited designs.2 An
early fondness for music accompanied this love of drawing. In
another way, too, his mother was able to aid in the cultivation
of his taste. Endowed with a wonderfully retentive memory, she
used when he was a little boy to recite to him passages from the
poets, Shakspere being her particular delight. Joshua was always
her favourite child ; and great was her disappointment when his
godfather, from whom she had expected help on his commencing
life, died rich, but left him nothing.
While Cristall was still a boy his parents removed to Blackheath,
where they lived for twenty-one years. But it was only during a
small portion of that term that he remained a member of the
domestic circle. He was sent for a short time to a school at
Greenwich. Meanwhile he had another opportunity of improving
his mind. There was then, as there is now, on the south side of the
heath, a quiet old brick building of a substantial kind, with pleasant
grounds about it, where ' decayed Turkey merchants ' rested after
their labours, and passed the evenings of their lives in comfort and
tranquillity. It was called Morden College, after its founder, Sir
John Morden, who gave its first benefaction in memory of a fortune
made at Aleppo. It was probably through Captain Cristall's con-
nexion with the trade to the Levant that his son came to make the
acquaintance of a pensioner there, who took a great fancy to the
lad. His name was Pollard. He had a folio copy of Dryden's
translation of Virgil, from which he would read aloud to his young
friend, and thus helped to develop the poetic sentiment already
aroused in him by his mother's recitals. Finally, he made him a
present of the precious volume, which Cristall treasured through
life. Mr. Jenkins makes a memorandum that on the 2oth of May,
1851, Miss Elizabeth Cristall showed him the book with its quaint
1 Miss E. Cristall. 2 Century of Painters, i. 508.
CH. V THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CKISTALL 181
old plates, and the names 'William Pollard' and 'Joshua Cristall '
inscribed within. She had then survived her brother, and was an
old lady turned eighty, but could read it, as well as work, without
glasses.
These days of springtide hope were all too short. When the
time came to launch the young man into the world, there arose the
old familiar contest between a son's natural longing and a parent's
unsympathetic will. Cristall's father, like Nicholson's and Varley's,
had a dread of the arts, and looked upon the profession of a painter
as a sure road to penury. Bred himself to mercantile pursuits, he
was wholly for trade. So Joshua was placed with a Mr. Ewson, of
Aldgate, who did a good business in china and glass. But the mind
of young Cristall ran upon higher art than tea-cups and tumblers.
It happened that the way in which he exercised his pencil became
a means of introduction to the favour of his employers. Mrs. Ewson,
having no children, had set her affections upon a dog, a rough
water-spaniel. This pet of his mistress's served Cristall for a model.
He made an excellent drawing of it, which so struck Mr. Ewson's
fancy that he had it framed and hung up during his wife's absence
as a surprise to her on her return home. The result was highly
successful. Not only was Mrs. Ewson delighted with the portrait,
but the draftsman became a prime favourite with the worthy couple.
So much so, indeed, that, had Cristall been of his father's way of
thinking, his fortune would from that time have been as good as
made. For the Ewsons' was a lucrative concern, and, both of them
dying soon after, it was offered gratuitously to the young artist.
But Cristall could not make up his mind to abandon thus all
hope of becoming a painter, and refused the offer. Not that he had
any visible prospect of attaining his desire. He had no means at
his disposal, and was again obliged to accept temporary employment
in the service of trade. It was possibly through connexions made
in the Aldgate business that he obtained a situation at Turner's
celebrated china factory, near Broseley in Shropshire. How he com-
ported himself there, and what were his wishes and intentions at this
time, may in some measure be inferred from the following extracts
from two letters of serious and judicious advice, written to him by
the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft ; who appears from their internal
evidence to haye been a kind and considerate friend, both to him and
to his sister. These letters are believed to have been written both in
182 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. ill
one year. The date 1793, or thereabouts, has been assigned to them,
but it seems moie likely that it was three or four years earlier.
' To Mr. Cristall, at Mr. Turner's China Manufactory, near Broscly,
Salop.
' London : March igth.
' . . . I think you ingenious, yet I am afraid that you are too
sanguine in your expectations of succeeding as an artist. Besides
abilities, a happy concurrence of circumstances is necessary to enable a
painter to earn a livelihood ; and many years of anxiety and painful
industry must be passed, before a man of superior talents can look
with any certainty for to-morrow's subsistence. You admire Mr.
Home's picture ; yet he was obliged to leave the kingdom because
he could not get employment.1 And Mr. F.,2 with his original genius
and uncommon diligence, had a very precarious support till the
Shakespear plan commenced. In short, I could mention many other
circumstances ; but it appears unnecessary, for you will not put
yourself on a par with Mr. Home, I am sure. However, my argu-
ments are not brought forward to discourage you from following in
some degree your bent. I only wish to caution you against the
headstrong ardour of youth. Pursue your studies. Practise as
much as you can ; but do not think of depending on painting for a
subsistence before you know the first rudiments of the art. I know
that you wish to be the friend and protector of your amiable sister,
and hope no inconsiderate act or thoughtless mode of conduct will
add to her cares, for her comfort very much depends on you. I find
Mr. Turner intends to send you to travel for him very soon. This
will in every respect be a great advantage to you. You will see the
country, form connections, and have more leisure to improve. Pray
let me hear from you soon and tell me what you intend to do, and I
will candidly give you my opinion ; and, as I have had more ex-
perience than you, it may be useful to you. I now write in a hurry
because the post is going, but I wish I could forcibly represent to
you the necessity of following your inclinations with caution. A
1 Robert Home was a brother of Sir Everard Home, the anatomist, and a pupil of
Angelica Kauffman's. After painting portraits in Dublin and exhibiting his works there and
in London, he went to India, was appointed court-painter to the King of Oude, and then
made a fortune by his profession. He chiefly depicted military subjects and state cere-
monials. (Redgrave's Dictionary.}
* Fuseli, R.A. He painted eight or nine subjects for Boydell's Shakspere Gallery.
CH. V THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 183
man's character is of the greatest importance in any line ; and if you
determine to leave Mr. Turner when your time expires, I hope you
will be careful not to quarrel with him. . . . How do you come on with
your Music and Drawing? You scarcely know what industry is re-
quired to arrive at a degree of perfection in the Fine Arts, and how
dreadful it is to plunge into the world without friends or acknowledged
abilities. I have lately made some inquiries, and I think that it
would be next to madness for you to launch out before you made any
preparatory steps. London is not now paved with gold, and a false
step in the beginning of life frequently throws a gloomy cloud over
the fairest hopes. If you determine to become a painter, declare
your intention to your master, father, and friends in a manly manner ;
when you have courage to do so, and act with firmness instead of
rashness, I shall begin to think that you have some chance to succeed.
A weak man may be rash, but only a strong understanding can enable
a youth to act with firmness. Should I perceive such strength of
mind in you, I shall suppose that you follow the impulse of nature,
and are not led away by unprincipled wishes, wild desires which make
you selfishly forget your sister's peace of mind and your own future
advantage. Virtue is self-denial. If you cannot bear some present
inconvenience, you are a common man and will never rise to any
degree of eminence in anything you undertake. I am yours,
'M. W.'
The second letter is in a like strain.
' To Mr. Cristall, Caugliley, near Brosely, Salop.
' London : December 9th.
' Your sister has, I hope, long since informed you that my silence
was not an intentional slight, but the natural consequence of various
circumstances. My time is fully employed, and when I cannot
attend to the pursuits which on every account occupy my mind, I am
not in a humour to write. I want air and exercise. Indeed I
am grown a wretched correspondent, when neither duty nor business
impels me. I am sorry to hear that you are yet unsettled, halting
between two opinions. You ought resolutely to determine on the
part you mean to act in life, and adhere to your determination. If
you waver much longer, you will spend your most vigorous days in
childish wishes, and, instead of being useful to your sisters, become
a burden to yourself. Determine like a man whether Drawing is to
184 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
be the business or amusement of your future life ; and banish vain
icgrets if you ever intend to make a respectable figure in the world.
With respect to music, I would by all means have you cultivate your
taste. When nature gives a propensity, it ought not to be neglected ;
and every accomplishment you acquire will render you a more agree-
able companion, and furnish you with an innocent source of pleasure
when you are alone. And every innocent relaxation is a support to
virtue ; for I respect the good old proverb that Idleness is the mother
of Vice, and I am persuaded that our greatest comforts must arise
from employment. But I need not tell you so, for you are always
active and eager to improve yourself and make a proper use of your
time. ... I have seldom seen your sister since you left town. I fear
her situation is still very uncomfortable. I wish she could obtain a
little more strength of mind. I am afraid she gives way to her feel-
ings more than she ought to do. If I were to give a short definition
of virtue, I should call it fortitude. Adieu. Believe me your friend,
'MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.'
The omitted passages refer to a brother of the writer's, whom she
describes as an idle, dissipated young man, warning Cristall against
him as a dangerous associate and bad example.
The appointment as traveller to Turner's firm, referred to in one
of the above letters, had been obtained by Cristall at his own solicita-
tion. But the life does not seem to have been very congenial to him.
He was not of a nature to push his way by making connexions, as his
good friend had anticipated. While travelling through England and
Wales, his thoughts ran more on the picturesque than on a mercantile
position. Part of his time was spent in sketching the old ruins and
abbeys that he met with in his journeys ; too much it is to be feared,
for, somehow, his engagement came to an end before the expiration
of the term agreed upon. Either he abandoned it himself, or his
employers, finding that he paid more attention to his pencil than to
their books, superseded him. After this second break-down of the
young man's prospects in trade, his return caused such dissatisfaction
in the family that he was induced to keep from their knowledge the
troubles he afterwards encountered.
It may have been about this time (but the dates are very con-
jectural) that any further pecuniary help which he might have derived
from his father was rendered impossible by a blow which fell upon the
CH. v THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 185
family. Mr. Cristall became paralytic, and was ruined by the fault or
mismanagement of dependants, in some business which he had con-
ducted, he not having at the time a son old enough to supply his
place. Young Cristall's life was now a hard one, trials and disap-
pointments succeeding one another apace. Having to earn his daily
bread, he first obtained, through a friend, a situation as a copying
clerk. But to his active mind the drudgery was an irksome task. He
longed to be at his pencil, or enjoying the beauties of nature, in free-
dom. Detesting his employment, and dozing over his desk, he was
unable to get through the amount of writing required of him. His
master complained, and on coming in one day found him asleep on
his stool. On receiving the sharp reproof that might have been ex-
pected, poor Joshua answered plainly that the work was too dull for
him, and that he could only be active in what he loved. This of course
ended in his dismissal.
He was at large again, and would study glorious nature. But
again, and again, he had to live. The friend who had assisted him
before, and to whom he now once more applied for advice, blamed him
for his conduct, and then suggested that he should try an employment
having in it some relation to, or spice of the fine arts. ' You can
draw,' said he, ' and have had means of observation while at the
Potteries. I think you might try that branch. I will give you a set
of china ' (jars apparently), ' for you to do your best with, and if I like
your work I will put you forward.' Cristall's ambition was still for a
higher style of art, but to refuse the work would be to lose an impor-
tant friend. He accepted the task, trial as it was to him. Some in-
struction, however, was necessary, even to accomplish this. So, seek-
ing for one who might teach him the technical matters needful to its
completion, he found a man who, for a sum of money (it was all the
pupil had), allowed him not only to work daily with his own artificers,
but to continue work after the others had gone. Then he found
courage to confess that he had given his last shilling, and was also
without a home. After that, he was permitted to stay all night in
the workshop, where he slept on stools before the stove, covered by
the men's working coats. How he kept himself from starving, it is
hard to say. Perhaps bis mother helped him clandestinely, as it is
said she long continued to do. He did not allow the workmen to
know of his dependent situation. Rising with the sun, he would walk
to Hampstead or to Kentish Town, then full of lovely country scenery,
186 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
would wash in some stream, breakfast on a dry loaf and water, and
cheer his spirit with a pure draught from nature's loveliness ; returning
to his work at the time when the men came to theirs, as if he, like
them, had a home which he had just left. One morning, on his re-
turn, he found, to his utter dismay, that the master who had so far
befriended him had decamped, taking everything away with him, except
the china which Cristall was painting. The man was deeply in debt
to his workmen as well as to the tradespeople who had employed him.
Bitter indeed was poor Cristall's anguish at the event, and the
terribly false position in which it placed him. But things at their
worst are apt to mend ; and a promise of better times arose even out
of these evil circumstances. Among the persons who had given work
to the runaway painter of crockery, and had suffered by his default,
was a Mr. Lacklan ; who, on coming to look after his own interests,
found our hero sitting, bewildered and disconsolate, in the denuded
workshop. Going up to him, Mr. Lacklan proceeded to inquire of
him the particulars of the man's departure. Whereupon Cristall told
him of his own melancholy condition. The hearer had pity on him
in his forlorn state, and took him to the home where he resided with
his wife's parents. In the house of these truly charitable persons,
whose name was Clayton, the poor young man was received with
Christian sympathy and kindness, for which he never after ceased to
express a heartfelt gratitude.
Mr. Lacklan contrived that he should go on with his work, alone
with him and under his observation ; and, when the painting was
finished, got some one in the trade to fire the pieces. Cristall at
length placed them in the hands of the friend who had entrusted
them to him ; but, after recounting the difficulties he had met with in
accomplishing the task, declined to try his skill upon any more.1 He
had now a home at Mr. Clayton's,2 and could take more time to look
about him. But he did not, even yet, see an opening through which
to enter the profession of which he longed to be a member.
1 Whether these were the first or only china enamels executed by him is perhaps doubtful.
'When' (on II Dec. 1851) 'I called,' writes Mr. Jenkins, 'on Mr. Dorrell ' (member of the
Water-Colour Society, born 1778, died 1857) ' to glean some particulars of his old friend
Cristall, he told me that Cristall, early in life, was engaged at the Potteries, and took from
his mantleshelf a small specimen of china, which he placed in my hands, stating that it was
painted by Cristall.'
2 Many of the particulars of this narrative are derived from notes furnished to Mr.
Jenkins by Mrs. M'Ketchnie, a granddaughter of this Mr. Clayton's, to whom Joshua
Cristall stood godfather.
CH. v THE SOCIETY FOUNDED-BARRET AND CRISTALL 187
Mr. Lacklan had originally been a print-designer, and it was
probably through him that Cristall soon after this obtained a situation
in a large printing establishment at Old Ford, where he remained for
a considerable time. This house was admirably managed, and con-
ducted with a benevolent regard for the well-being of the employes.
The building they lived in was large, and commodiously adapted to
the purpose of enabling many men to associate together after business
hours. They had a great room, furnished, it would seem, with books,
in which they met for reading and discussion, and where any
favourite branch of study might be pursued. At the head of the
establishment, either as master or foreman, was a well-informed
Scotchman, by whom Cristall's studies were greatly aided, both in
drawing and in reading. He would point out the best authors,
and suggest a course calculated to improve the mind. On Sunday
they were visited by a Unitarian minister, and on particular evenings
they held theological discussions with him, on his own creed, the
doctrines of Swedenborg, &c. Here our student, though lean enough
to begin with, resolved to put his body, as well as his mind, through
a course of training. He entered into an agreement with a Scotch
comrade, to live, both of them, for twelve months, wholly on salt pork
and rice. They procured between them a barrel of the one and a
bag of the other, and stuck strictly to their engagement. At the end
of the year, they had no wish to renew it, although, as Cristall often
declared afterwards, they were never better in their lives. When he
left Old Ford, it was with a final determination to enter life as an
artist.
His father probably died at about this time ; for Miss Cristall
states that it was not until after that event that he entered on his
favourite occupation. The Lacklans had now ceased to reside at Mr.
Clayton's, and gone to live at 28 Surrey Street, Blackfriars Road.
Cristall took up his abode there also, and, except during an occasional
residence out of town, dwelt with them for the next twelve years.
His sister Elizabeth came to live with him, and participated in the
endeavours he made to obtain a foothold on the ladder of life. They
were thrown upon the world without property ; but he persisted in
following his decided bent, and tried at every avenue to the profession
of art. Not satisfied with enamelling, he took up engraving, and for
a short time ' worked with Barlow ' (probably J. Barlow, who executed
plates in Ireland's ' Hogarth,' Rees's ' Encyclopedia,' &c.). But it would
188 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY EK. in
not do. Then it was proposed between them that he should draw
and Miss Cristall engrave. But this scheme was abandoned on the
representation of Holloway, the leading engraver of the day, that a
lady could not be regularly taught unless she lived with a father or
relative who could instruct her.1 She could not be taken as an
apprentice, and no separate lessons could be given. Women had not
then the facilities for education which they now enjoy. So this idea
with the others had to be given up ; and some years after Cristall
had attained his majority, he became a student of the Royal
Academy.2
He now began to breathe the air which his constitution demanded.
The progress of development was rapid, albeit he could never overtake
the lost moments of his many wasted years. He studied anatomy,
and his taste for classic art was formed and strengthened by the
models placed before him. He attended Barry's lectures, was fired by
his enthusiasm, and wished to follow his example. The professor
told the students that artists could live at Rome, as he had done, on
fourpence a day. So thither Joshua Cristall and Miss Elizabeth
resolved to trudge together hand in hand, even as he and his elder
sister had gone to school in childhood from their old home at
Rotherhithe. They could walk all the way, and improve their talents
on the road. But war with France broke out, and this project, too,
had to be set aside.
Cristall seems now to have turned his attention more seriously to
the use of water-colours as affording sufficient means of expression
of his artistic ideas. A folio of drawings by Raphael, which he had
observed to be in good preservation, appear to have been some
encouragement to him in his endeavours. He thought that water-
colour sketches might be heightened and improved from the mere
washes which they formerly were. ' At last,' adds Miss Cristall, after
making the above statement, ' he succeeded and made pictures. But
his best years were cruelly wasted. Want of proper instruction made
him dissatisfied with what he did, and I used to grieve to see
repeatedly beautiful scenes and ideas in figure and landscape painted
over, or turned and used on the opposite side. More than has come
out has been so wasted. His higher qualities have been sadly lost.
1 Byrne and Lowry taught their daughters to engrave.
2 Miss Cristall assigns the year 1795 or thereabouts to this event, but it seems by what
follows to have been somewhat earlier.
CH. v THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 189
... I could not but deplore that such decided and real genius should,
through unfortunate prepossessions in his father, be almost cast away.
... I cannot give dates, except that in 1795 we two were living
together.' '
The time came at last when the artist was able, though barely, to
shift for himself. It was so in an unfigurative sense, for his mother
complained that she had had to buy his shirts for him when he was
thirty. But he was, as above said, her favourite child, and out of her
little annuity she still helped him occasionally with clothes at a time
of life when men are generally making their best income.
The steps whereby Cristall came in course of time to be numbered
as one of the little clique of water-colour painters of talent known to
connoisseurs at the end of the century, it would be difficult to count
exactly.2 But one aid to improvement, at least, may be confidently
set down to the influence of the good friend of all striving young
artists of his class, Dr. Monro, at whose house he attended as one of
the group of students so often mentioned in these pages.3
The late Dr. Percy in his MS. Catalogue, now at the British
Museum, states that he saw in 1881, at Sir John St. Aubyn's, at
Mount's Bay, Cornwall, some large drawings of that county signed
' J. Cristall,' with a date about 1790 or somewhat later, ' very carefully
done and of a prevailing blue colour.'
One of the first professional efforts of his brush was in a share
which he took in painting an early panorama, which circumstance
caused him ever after to take a great interest in that branch of art.
This one represented Constantinople ; and«it was painted in the great
room at Spring Gardens, where Girtin's ' London ' was afterwards
exhibited. One of his coadjutors was a comrade of the name of
Hayward, with whom he had made acquaintance at the works at Old
1 Letter from Miss Cristall to Mrs. Clivc, dated ' Lewisham Hill, April 8th, 1851.'
2 The account given by Mrs. M'Ketchnie of Cristall's earlier life contains the following
passage, which is here given for what it is worth, though it varies in some particulars from
the history of the origin of the Water-Colour Society as above recounted : ' He was studying
hard as a portrait painter, and his admirers considered he would have excelled Sir Thomas
Lawrence had he continued at it ; but one day when returning from sketching he met
Varley, Girtin, and another whose name I forget. They told him they had been talking of
forming a society for exhibiting water-colour drawings, and asked him to join them ; he said
with all his heart. Thus the Society was formed, and his portrait painting discarded, which
sadly grieved his admirers.' If this be correct, it gives to Girtin (at least) a share not
hitherto accredited to him in the origination of our Society, and, as he died in 1802, seems
to assign to it a somewhat earlier date.
' Redgrave's Dictionary.
190 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
Ford, attracted probably by their common proclivity to art.1 It was
an intensely cold winter, during which Cristall endured much suffer-
ing ; one of the specially recorded frosts, possibly the same in which
Thaddeus of Warsaw (or John Sell Cotman) came to London as afore-
mentioned. The young painters used to say that they had great
difficulty in getting through their work ; being in no small danger of
falling from the very high scaffold erected for their purpose, and under
the vigilant eye of a proprietor who was so diligent in overlooking
them, that, although benumbed with cold, they were unable to come
down and warm themselves.
Cristall also began to take pupils. His abilities and pleasing
manners soon won him friends ; and he made some intimate acquaint-
ances with leading men of talent. Among them, George Dyer, the
poet and Greek scholar, became a constant visitor ; and he is said to
have conceived aplatonic affection for Miss Cristall. We have already
found our artist sketching in North Wales when the Varleys met him
there in 1802, and going there again with Cornelius Varley in 1803.
He was enabled to make these tours and also one to the Lakes by
an opportune bequest of a sum of money.2
It was in the course of the first of these rambles that an adventure
occurred which placed the lives of Cristall and a companion 3 in
some jeopardy. Two accounts of the affair, furnished to Mr. Jenkins
by friends of Cristall (Dorrell and Mrs. M'Ketchnie), agree in the
main particulars. It seems that the party had to put up for a
few days at an inn in a mining district, where the people were much
excited by the prospect of'a French invasion. On returning one day
from sketching, our artists found the largest room in the house filled
with colliers, who, having taken them for spies making plans of the
country, were prepared to deal with them after the fashion of Mr.
Justice Lynch. Mutual ignorance of language prevented an expla-
nation, and matters might have been very serious had it not been
for the intervention of the stout landlord. As it was, the supposed
offenders were hurried off to the nearest magistrate's. But here a
fresh impediment occurred. His worship, 'it being midday,' was
1 Presumably J. S. Hayward, mentioned by Redgrave as an amateur who painted well
in water-colours and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1805 to 1812 both figures and
landscapes ; and probably the same Hayward who was Secretary of the Sketching Society.
2 T. J. J- tx relatione Dorrell. There are small studies from Wales, dated 1803, in the
collection of drawings by Cristall at the British Museum ; and from the Lakes, dated 1805,
both there and at the Scottish National Gallery (Nos. 214, 249).
• Named as ' Webster the geologist.'
CH. V THE SOCIETY FOUNDED— BARRET AND CRISTALL 191
drunk, and falling downstairs in an attempt to answer the summons,
remained for the time incapable. Fortunately, however, the reverend
gentleman (he was the parson) had a better half, who became their
preserver. She could speak a little English, and was able to grasp
the situation. Using the influence she possessed, which was consider-
able, with the patriot mob, she induced them to wait till next day, the
prisoners remaining in custody at the parsonage. Then, at midnight,
having provided three horses, she rode by their side through by-ways,
brambles and thickets, and placed them in safety ten miles away.
In 1803 Cristall exhibits at the Royal Academy ; and this brings us
within twelve months of the time when, at the age of thirty-five, he
was induced to join the Society of water-colour artists, which was in
course of formation. His address in the Royal Academy Catalogue for
1803 is ' 137 High Holborn ; ' and that in the first of the Society's (for
1805) is ' 36 Berners Street and at Kentish Town.1 Doubtless he
resided in the last-named quarter.
192 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. Ill
CHAPTER VI
GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLWORTHY, AND RIGAUD
John Glover — Popular teacher and artist — Birth and parentage— Writing-master — Taste for
agriculture — Love of animals -Power of taming birds — Taste for music — Early subjects
— Settles at Lichfield — Marriage and family — Personal characteristics — Diligence and
activity — Sketching in Wales and Dovedale— Boyish spirit — Works at the Royal
Academy — William Havcll — Birth and parentage — Artist family — Irrepressible bent —
Sketches in Wales — Exhibits at the Royal Academy — Painter in local colour— -James
Holworthy — Birth and antecedents — Friend of Turner's— S. F. Rigaud — Figure-painter
— Antecedents.
JOHN GLOVER, the next above-mentioned of the new adherents, was
an artist of great popularity in his day. Born in the same year as
Barret and Cristall, he, unlike them, was not only well established
already in the profession, but enjoyed a wide appreciation of his talent
as a landscape-painter. Although of an humbler origin than either,
he had had fewer obstacles to contend with in the pursuit of his chosen
career. Hitherto his success had been in a measure confined to the
provinces ; for, although he had exhibited at the Royal Academy
since 1795, he resided at Lichfield, and there he was chiefly engaged
in tuition, both ' public and private.' ' He painted in oil, as well as
in water-colours, but it is on his now faded works in the latter medium
that his reputation chiefly rests. His practice, technically speaking,
was little in advance of the old tinted method, but his style was not
devoid of originality, and, in his own drawings, showed itself capable
of producing very beautiful effects. It was, however, not free from
a mannerism which recommended it to a tribe of pupils who, not
being like himself students of nature, necessarily failed in its intended
application.
Glover was a self-taught artist ; and, although his practice in
water-colours is said to have been founded on that of William Payne,2
does not appear to have derived much development from contact with
1 Art Journal, I July, 1850. * Century of Painters, i. 515.
CH. vi GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLVVORTHY, AND RIGAUD 193
the greater artists of the rising school. His manner of painting was
probably settled by the time that he joined the Water-Colour Society.
A fuller analysis of his practice being reserved for another occasion,
the present shall be devoted to an account of his antecedents and
personal characteristics. Some of the following anecdotes refer, indeed,
to a rather later period than that with which we are now dealing, but
are inserted here to show the manner of man that he must have been
from the time, at least, of his arrival at man's estate.
He was the youngest of three children, and born at Houghton-
on-the-Hill, about six miles east of the town of Leicester, on the
1 8th of February, 1767. His father was a poor man, engaged in
agriculture. But the bucolic cast of the parent's mind did not
prevent him from giving his children a good plain and Christian
education, or induce him to check his son John's bias towards art,
exhibited in the child's habit of covering every scrap of paper he
could find with infantine designs. Young Glover could handle the
pen too with effect, as well as the pencil, and became so great a
proficient in calligraphy, that when he grew to the age of nineteen
he was engaged as writing master in the free school at Appleby. He
had not, in the mean time, like some of his rivals in art already
mentioned, been eating out his heart in a life distasteful to him, nor
consuming his spirit in vain endeavours to follow a congenial pursuit,
instead of the plough. He had a natural taste for agriculture, which
he retained to the end of his days. The country was not to him, as
to young Nicholson, a region of mental desolation. His love of
rural scenery was accompanied by a remarkable fondness for animals.
Cattle are among the favourite subjects of his early drawings, and at
one time he took to painting animals as large as life. But his
peculiar fancy was for birds. He had an extraordinary power of
taming them, and delighted in making them his pets. These he held
on such terms of attachment that he would allow them to fly away
to their native woods, and they came back at his call whenever he
pleased. Perhaps a good ear for music, to the practice of which
sister art he was much addicted, may have had something to do
with the fascination he commanded.
There can be no doubt, too, that while helping to till the midland
acres he was diligent in studying the scenery of his own country
district. In a book of slight sketches by Glover, brought from the
antipodes, where it was purchased of him late in his life, Mr. Jenkins
O
I94 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
found one of trees in Indian ink, under which the artist had written
the following lines : —
Oh, Ingersby . . .
How gladly I recall your well-known seats,
Beloved of old, and that delightful time
When all alone for many a summer's day
I wandered through your calm recesses, led
In silence by some powerful hand unseen.
To these lines he had added the following words of explanation :
' This was my early school. These were the scenes near my native
place, which helped to make me a Landscape Fainter.' One of the
three drawings of his first year's appearance, in 1795, at Somerset
House, was a ' View near Ingersby, Leicestershire.' Again, in the
first exhibition, in 1824, of the Society of British Artists, of which
Glover was one of the founders, there was a picture of his entitled,
' A favourite haunt of my youth in Leicestershire.' Pyne describes
it as representing an enchanting site, with greenwood trees and a
pellucid, brawling stream, observing that the artist ' whose original
feeling for the pursuits of painting developed itself under the
influence of his own perceptions alone, first studied in the vicinity of
the spot.' l This was no doubt another reminiscence of Ingersby
Hollow, a spot within two miles of Houghton.
Glover's professional practice began during his residence at
Appleby. He found employment in what was to so many of our
water-colour painters their first pathway to profit, the delineation of
gentlemen's seats in the neighbourhood. And doubtless he also
turned to good account the opportunities afforded by the lovely
scenery of Westmoreland.
After some half-dozen years spent in this united devotion to the
pen and pencil, he felt sufficient confidence in himself to set up as an
artist and teacher of art, in a new locality. In 1794 he removed to
the cathedral town of Lichfield, where, as above stated, he divided
his time between a good business which he acquired there, as a draw-
ing master, and his own practice in art ; sketching as much as he
could in the neighbourhood, and indulging at the same time his taste
for music. He now began to paint in oil ; and also etched some
plates,2 and we first find his name in the Academy Catalogue the year
after he took up his residence in the Trent valley.
1 Somerset House Gazette, ii. 82.
2 Redgrave says that he made many etchings. The British Museum has only one. of
two cows, in soft ground.
CH. VI GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLWORTHY, AND RIGAUD 195
He married at an early age, and was the father of six children,
four sons and two daughters. In person, Glover was tall and stout.
But he had club feet. In spite of his lameness, however, he was very
active, and, enjoying excellent health, could walk many miles a day
with ease. He followed his art with untiring diligence, was an
early riser, and only took as much rest and recreation as appeared
needful to keep him in health. A very little sufficed for that
purpose. If report spoke truly, when he was about to open an
exhibition of his works (hereinafter mentioned), he took no more
than two hours' sleep in the twenty-four for a month together, except
on Sundays. A pupil ' relates that when they were painting together
at a like time Glover would take off his spectacles, and, in a sitting
posture, fall asleep in an instant, and in a few minutes would again be at
work, perfectly refreshed, to pursue till a late hour in the evening the
occupation he loved. The same informant, who worked and sketched
with him much when at the height of his career, relates further that,
during a six weeks' tour together in Wales, the master was always
up before five and kept on at work every day till dark. The pupil,
on his own confession, was less industrious. But cliacun a son gout.
' We had each a tent,' says he. ' Mr. Glover gave me mine. His first
picture in this trip was a view of Cader Idris from the hills above
Mr. Owen's of Garthynghared. He painted ; I was only looking on,
and rambling about the hills with Mr. Owen's daughters.' Yet
Glover could ramble too, if sufficiently tempted, in spite of his love
of art, and his club feet. ' I remember,' says the same informant, 'on
cne of these days ' (this was about the year 1820), 'that Mr. Glover
left his tent to follow a young skylark, which he at length caught ;
and he tamed it so completely that he gave it its liberty every day,
and it came to him for food, and every night it rested in a little
covered basket. . He afterwards tamed a white water-wagtail, a
yellow wagtail, and a titmouse. They all slept in the same basket.
The lark was alive several years afterwards. The wagtails came to an
untimely end. The titmouse had fits after eating ; and he gave it to
a Miss Lloyd of Caernarvon. He would, for recreation merely,
' follow a bird and find its nest. I once saw him jump up from his
picture to take a wasps' nest in the middle of the day. Never was
there a boy more earnest in the sport, or more absorbed by it till it
was ended.'
1 Mr. Edward Price, writing to Mr. Jenkins from Nottingham in 1856.
o 2
,96 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY BK. in
Though 'at all other times very diligent with his pencil, Mr.
Glover was playful in his moments of recreation.' In illustration of
this, his pupil gives the following account of ' a little bit of merry
mischief he attempted in Dovedale, when he made two fine pictures
there ' : ' I have heard my father, who was the incumbent of Christ
Church, Needwood, say that he remembered the river Dove when it
was far more beautiful than it is now,1 or than it was when Mr. G.
was there. It was in its natural state, when the bright stream met
with the frequent interruption of fragments of rock, and other'
obstacles ' of a most picturesque character. When Mr. Glover was
painting there, but few of these things remained. For the present
proprietor had caused artificial weirs to be made in several places
across the river, to deepen the water for his trout and grayling. Mr.
Glover did not like this. We took up our quarters at a little inn
called the Dog and Partridge, about a mile from the entrance of the
dale, and early in the morning, when we [went] with our tents, and late
in the evening when we returned to our inn, we stopped to do all the
mischief we could to these weirs. Mr. Glover sometimes contrived
to throw a lump of rock cleverly upon the verge of the fall, which
caused a little diversion of the water ; but he intended to dislodge a
stone of the weir, and leave the water to finish his work ; and he
would, with a stick, wriggle about among the heavy stones till he
actually saw runlets of the river beginning to do his bidding. But
he had no mercy upon me ; for he sent me into the water to assist in
the work of destruction. A quarter of a century has passed,' adds
the writer, ' and the weirs appear just the same now as when we were
trying to alter them.'
Of Glover's agility and daring, his companion relates the following
example, the scene being in the same locality ; — ' There is a cavern in
Dovedale, high up the hill on the right hand, and halfway up the
dale, called ReynarcCs Cave. This cavern is in a perpendicular face
of the rock. Directly in front of this is a high natural detached arch,
through which you see the cave. Scramble up to it, for the base of
the hill from which it rises is at an angle of about sixty degrees with
the river. Pass through the arch, and still climb on many yards till
you reach Reynard's Cave. Now, look down, through the arch, upon
the river ; and look up to the ridge over the arch, and there you will
see the spot on which I saw Mr. Glover. If you try to go there, you
1 1856.
CH. VI GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLWORTHY, AND RIGAUD 197
will probably break your neck in the attempt. The way to it is up
the hill, to the left, from the cave, till you are as high as the ridge over
the arch. This is just the spot on which I stood, when Mr. Glover
asked me to come to him. Moreover, he balanced himself and
danced upon the ridge, and vaulted from thence across to the
opposite rock (namely, the rock over Reynard's Cave). I could not
go along it.' Yet there was ' this mountain of a man ' with club feet
more foolishly daring than I was, or any school lad I ever saw. I
have seen many daring fellows try to get to this place, without being
able to do it.' If this was a true picture of John Glover at the time
to which it refers, it cannot be a too highly coloured one to represent
him as he was some twenty years younger, when our Society was
founded.
Though he played thus when he played, he worked also when he
worked. He would be in the meadows of a summer morning, and
his sketch-book was always with him at hand, as he went to attend
his pupils. And in the winter, when the ground has been covered
with snow, he made studies of cattle in the fold-yard. Nothing
escaped his observation, and he never lost an opportunity of noting
down anything that was worth remembering. ' I was with him,'
writes the companion above quoted, ' at Penmaenmawr in North Wales,
in a thunderstorm, when he stopped to sketch some donkeys with
their backs raised like a pent-house, the water streaming off them ;
and, when he was on his way to Dovedale, he alighted at the Green
Man at Ashbourne from the " Derby Dilly " 2 and made an admirable
drawing of a goat, which he afterwards exhibited. Thus he was
always ready for his work, and thus he obtained a freedom of
hand and a general knowledge of form and effect, which enabled
him to produce pictures of any subject and size with rapidity and
ease.'
In 1795, 1799, 1801, 1803, and 1804, Glover had altogether had
about sixteen works in the Academy exhibitions, from one to six a
year. Only one was hung in the great room, namely a ' Sunset ' in
1799- This was doubtless his d^but as a painter in oils. In 1804 he
had a view of the Trossachs, before which time his subjects had chiefly
been taken from Derbyshire and Wales.
1 He weighed eighteen stone.
2 ' Dilly ' is short for diligence \ and the above name was given to a coach running
between Derby and Ashbourne. It is referred to by Canning in the Anti-Jacobin. See
also Alhcnceuin, 16 Oct. 1886, p. 497, on Pendleton's History of Derbyshire,
198 THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY UK. in
The WILLIAM HAVELL who was found sketching at Dolgclly by
the Varleys in 1802, and at Ross by Cornelius Varley and Cristall in
1803, and who made a cock-shy of his palette in the market-place,
was a young man just entering the profession, when he joined these
friends as another member of the new Society. Probably he was the
youngest of the brotherhood, his birthday being the gth of February,
1782. His father, though a teacher of drawing, who lived and prac-
tised at Reading, was not over-anxious that his sons should follow the
same calling. For he had not found it lucrative enough to depend on
for the maintenance of himself and his wife and a family of fourteen
children. By way of supplement he had had to open a small shop
which brought him a steadier income. Several of the family, how-
ever, took to art in one form or another,1 among whom William, the
third son out of eight, was by far the most distinguished. He had
been told off to the shop, but showed his desire to be an artist by
seizing every opportunity of improving his power over the pencil.
He was obliged to foster this taste in private ; but one day his father
surprised him while he was finishing a sketch, and he surprised his
father by the evidence it afforded of a secretly nurtured talent. He
was then permitted to follow his bent, and turned out to gather a
wholesome art-pasture on the Welsh mountain side. But he had
first been provided with a good classical education under Dr. Valpy
at the Reading grammar school, where his father held the post of
drawing master. In 1804 he showed the results of his study, in the
three first drawings which he exhibited at Somerset House, two of
Caernarvon Castle, and the third of Nant Francon. It may be
assumed that they were of such merit as to justify his admission to
the body which he now joined, at the age of twenty-three.
The new method of Turner, Girtin, and Varley, wherein local tints
were laid in at once, and the design advanced with the corresponding
shadows, was practised by Havell also. He painted in oil as well as
water-colour, and was destined to hold a high place in the British
school of landscape. His address in the Academy Catalogue of 1804
is ' 6 Clipstone Street, Fitzroy Square,' and in the next year he is at
'61 Poland Street.'
Two more foundation members, of less distinction, have yet to be
mentioned.
1 There are eleven of the name Havell mentioned in Graves's Dictionary of Artists.
CH. VI GLOVER, HAVELL, HOLWORTHY, AND RIGAUD 199
JAMES HOLWORTHY was born on the loth of April, 1781. He is
said to have been an intimate friend of J. M. W. Turner's ; ' and he
appears to have been a pupil of Glover's.2 He exhibited three Welsh
views at the Royal Academy in 1803 and 1804; but otherwise little
is known of him before the time of his joining the Society. His
address in the first catalogue is ' 4 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square.'
STEPHEN FRANCIS RIGAUD, a figure-painter, was, according to
Redgrave,5 ' a student of the Royal Academy, and first appears as an
exhibitor in 1797, and for many years was an occasional contributor
both of portraits and of subject pictures, sacred and classic. In 1801
he gained the Academy gold medal for his historical painting,
' Clytemnestra exulting over Agamemnon.' His address was '71
Great Titchfield Street.'
1 Bemrose's Life and Works of Wright of Derby (1885), p. 4.
* 'Letter to /*** A*****, Esq., A connoisseur in London, by William Carey, p. 15.'
Privately printed, Manchester, 1809.
' Dictionary of the English School.
BOOK IV
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
CHAPTER I
IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806
The Brook Street Rooms — Their antecedent uses — First Exhibition of the Society (1805) —
Sale-clerk, a novelty — Classes of subjects— Profits divided — First Associates —Their
previous biographies — Miss Byrne— J. J. Chaton — Robert Freebairn — William Dela-
motte — P. S. Munn — R. R, Reinagk— John Smith — Francis Stevens— John Thurston —
Glover and Gilpin — Wells elected President — Second Exhibition (1806) — Its contents —
Profits divided— Shelley and his portraits — Smith a Member — New Associates — Their
previous biographies — Thomas Heaphy — Natural v. Academic teaching — Augustus Pugin
— Birth and descent — Escape from France — Mathews the actor — With John Nash —
Architectural drawings.
THUS there were assembled sixteen practitioners in water-colours to
join their forces in an Exhibition, which should show the public of
what their art was capable, when standing on its own foundation.
The next thing was to determine the locus in quo. A set of two
rooms were found, apparently well suited to the purpose ; being in a
central situation, and already familiar to amateurs and collectors.
They were at No. 20 Lower Brook Street, not far from the spot where
the scheme had been hatched in George Street, Hanover Square.
They had been built for show or sale rooms, by Gerard Vandergucht,
one of a well-known Flemish family of artists, who flourished for more
than a hundred years in England as engravers, painters, and dealers
in objects of art. Gerard died on the i8th of March, 1776, aged eighty.
His stock-in-trade, comprising a large collection of engravings, was
sold in the following year ; and Benjamin Vandergucht, his thirty-
second child,1 relinquishing portraiture for picture dealing, succeeded
1 They were a prolific race these Vanderguchts ; the thirty-two were born of one mother,
who survived her husband.
202 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
to the business,1 admitting the public to see his collection of pictures *
on payment of one shilling. Benjamin was drowned in the Thames
in 1794, not far from Hogarth's grave in Chiswick churchyard ; and
this collection came in its turn under Christie's hammer in 1796.
After that, Thomas Barker, known as ' Barker of Bath ' and celebrated
for his picture of ' The Woodman," had an exhibition of his works in
the Brook Street Gallery. From him the rooms passed into the
hands of the painter, Henry Tresham, who, on returning from Rome,
opened the gallery in association with ' several other gentlemen pic-
ture dealers,' for the sale of ' Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,' as some
of them proved. Becoming a Royal Academician, however, in 1799,
and engaged in literary and other work, he had no further occasion
for the great room, and let it, with its appurtenances, to the Water-
Colour Society.3 In the days of the Vanderguchts, this house in Lower
Brook Street was distinguished by the sign of the Golden Head*
When the numbering of the houses was altered at a later period
of the nineteenth century, No. 20 Brook Street (or Lower Brook Street,
as it was sometimes called) became No. 54. An inspection of this
and the adjoining number on each side (viz. 56 and S4A) seems to
show that the old rooms, now divided, originally extended along the
backs of these houses. Behind No. 56 there is a ware-room with
a raised skylight, which has evidently been built for an exhibition
gallery.
Here, on Monday, the 22nd of April, 1805, the Exhibition was at
last opened to the public, with the announcement quoted in the Intro-
duction to this history. The plan, now adopted in similar exhibitions,
of placing an attendant in the room with a price-book of pictures for
sale, and a register of purchasers' names, was introduced as a new
experiment. The novelty, if any, seems to have consisted in the
power given to the clerk to enter into an agreement for sale, and
receive a deposit of ten per cent, to secure the purchase. In the
exhibitions at Somerset House, it does not appear to have been the
practice at this period even to give information as to the prices of
1 Cf. Somerset House Gazette, \. 1 30, Stanley's edition of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and
Engravers, and Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists of the English. School. Redgrave says,
that Benjamin was a son of Gerard's brother John, an engraver who helped Hogarth, and
died in the same year as he did, aged seventy-nine.
2 Sir William Beechey exhibited some of his works here. See Sandby's History of Ike
Royal Academy, i. 311.
3 Somerset House Gazette, ttbi supra.
4 See Royal Academy Catalogue, 1771 ; address of Benjamin Vandergucht.
CH I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 203
pictures for sale, though, in the early catalogues, such works were
distinguished by an asterisk. ' But there had been greater facilities
at the Incorporated Society of Artists. In the catalogue of the
exhibition of 1770, at Spring Gardens, is, for the first time, the
following announcement : ' The Public are desired to take notice
that the numbers and prices of such performances as are to be disposed
of, are left with the assistant secretary, who attends in the room.' The
Free Society employed a similar attendant, sometimes a woman.
' The experiment thus fairly started succeeded beyond the most
sanguine expectations of its projectors. The exhibition was daily
crowded with visitors. Connoisseurs, dilettanti, artists, and critics, vied
with each other in loud commendations of the collected works. The
noble in rank and the leaders of fashion graced it with their presence.
An eager curiosity seized upon those who claimed to live in the
exclusive region of taste.' l Pyne tells us that among those who
offered the warmest congratulations on the success of the undertaking
were many of the leading Academicians. In the seven weeks during
which the exhibition remained open, nearly 12,000 persons paid for
admission. Not only were the rooms thus crowded, but, what was
yet more gratifying, the visitors ' appeared emulous to become
purchasers of the works exhibited. Hitherto, very few instances
could be named of the pictures of living artists being disposed of at
a public exhibition ; whilst here, the room at once became an excellent
mart for sale.' 2
All the sixteen members were represented by works in the
gallery, but their contributions to the joint show varied considerably
in quantity. John Varley sent no less than 42 works, Pyne and
Shelley 28 each, Glover and Hills 23 each, Wells 21, Gilpin 20, Pocock
17, Nicholson 14, Havell and Cornelius Varley 12 each, Barret n,
Cristall 8, Rigaud 6, and Holworthy and Nattes 5 each. As was
to be expected, the main strength of the collection lay in its land-
scapes. But the figure element was present also, and it gave a
variety to this first gathering, the absence of which was complained
of a few years after, when landscape seems to have acquired an all
but absolute dominion.3 It is true that the works of Shelley, Rigaud,
and even Cristall, whatever may have been their actual merits, did not
1 J. J. J. MS. ! Somerset House Gazette, i. 131.
' See Repository of Arts, iii. 423, on Exhibition of 1810 ; and Somerset House Gazette,
ii. 127 on that of 1824.
204 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
entirely represent the figure school which then existed among water-
colour draftsmen. Of its most characteristic branch we find nothing
as yet on the Society's walls. It was only in later years, and in a
younger generation, that the illustrative school of Blake, Stothard,
Westall, and others made its appearance in the water-colour exhi-
bitions. Artists of their class had found full employment in making
designs for the embellishment of books, and thus had not suffered
in the same way as the landscape painters from competition with oil
pictures. Nor was there at first much more than a suggestion of that
species of figure painting which concerns itself with present life and
the aspect of the world we live in, such as existed in the works of
Gainsborough, and had been continued by Morland, Ibbetson, and
others, and (largely mixed with caricature) in those of a real genius
in his way, Thomas Rowlandson. This would have formed the true
counterpart of the class of natural landscape which was now being
brought into such marked significance. It was only present here in a
few rustic figures of fishermen and others, and five studies for a work
in hand on the costume of England, by Pyne, and a gipsy group by
Wells. Including these, and eight portraits by Shelley, the figure sub-
jects formed less than 20 per cent, of the whole collection. About half
a dozen were pure allegory ; l conspicuous among them a tribute by
Shelley to the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom his own art
was so much indebted. Herein ' Painting overcome with Grief is con-
soled by Sculpture, who presents her with a medallion of Sir Joshua,
for the Genii of Taste to convey to the Temple of Fame,' &c. &c.
Reynolds had then been dead thirteen years. The remainder were
subjects from the poets, sacred history, heathen mythology, and the
classic fancy of the artist. Motives derived from English history or
fiction were absent altogether. The art exhibited in these imaginative
works was not of a progressive kind. Their ideal of beauty, never
very robust, has since gone out of fashion. Nor was it destined long
to survive. It had to die and be forgotten ere a fresh aesthetic impulse,
reflecting archaic models of quite another stamp, came to create the
poetic figure-school followed by certain of our painters in water-colours
in recent times.
In matters of technique, however, the works of Shelley and Rigaud
afford, in the painting of the figure, examples of a method bearing
1 One of Shelley's, ' Memory gathering the flowers cropped by Time,' is now in the South
Kensington Museum.
CH. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 205
the same relation to the process in common use before their time, as
that of the landscape draftsmen in local colour bore to the old-fashioned
tinting of topographic views. Examples of the strong-outline and
grey-and-wash process applied to the figure must be sought for in the
drawings of Sandby, De Loutlierbourg, Dayes, Mortimer, Wheatley,
Rowlandson, Alexander, and many others. Of the more complete
practice, the leading representative appears to have been Richard
Westall, R.A., whose name is specially associated with a reform of
figure-painting in water-colours corresponding to that which Turner
and Girtin have the credit of effecting in landscape.1 William
Hamilton, R.A. (b. 1751, d. 1801), and Shelley were of the same
class as Westall.
But the great majority of the drawings in this first exhibition
were, as has been above said, landscapes, of one kind or another.
And it was in this department that the change was chiefly manifest
which had come over water-colour drawing. Here there was visible
just enough, both of the old motives and of the old processes in
painting, to indicate the states of art and practice out of which the
present developments had sprung. The early tinted manner survived
in the works of Pocock, old architectural topography in those of
Nattes ; and in one or two examples by Gilpin there was just a
reminder of the old craze for ' gentlemen's seats.' The ' classic ' or
ideal element derived from Claude and Poussin, which had been
paramount in our landscape art until the time of Gainsborough, was
also present, and probably reigned over a group of ' compositions,' so
named, among the drawings sent by Glover, Havell, and Varley, and,
in nearly all cases, over the works of Barret. Under the generic
names ' landscape,' ' view from nature,' ' a lake scene,' &c., may also have
been included representations more or less characteristic of particular
kinds of scenery, without the aim of giving importance to an actual
locality. But by far the larger number of the landscapes belonged
to the class which might still be called topographic, though in that
wider acceptation of the term which does not exclude from its scope
mere natural scenery, provided that the features peculiar to a given spot
are duly recorded. It was the form of landscape in which the classic
school on the one hand, and the ' dry-as-dust ' topography of the olden
time on the other, had finally met and merged. Except eight views in
1 See Somerset House Gazette, ii. 46, and Century of Painters, i. 408.
206 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 UK. IV
Norway by Wells,1 and a few others of small importance, the whole of
the remaining landscapes were scenes in the British Isles, forty-three
per cent, being from Wales. Of these Welsh views more than two-fifths
are by John Varley, besides from three to seven drawings each by
Cristall, Havcll, Nicholson, Pocock, and Cornelius Varley, all belonging
to the Celtic contingent. The North of England, chiefly Yorkshire
with her abbeys, supplied the subjects of twenty-four drawings by
various artists ; and ten, mostly by Nicholson, were from Scotland.
Gilpin brought six Irish views-from the Lakes of Killarney.
There were two further ingredients which varied the interest of
the exhibition as a whole, namely : Hills's studies of cattle, sheep, and
deer ; and a series of spirited drawings by Pocock, of British sea-
fights, some of the great engagements that had taken place within the
memory of all visitors to the gallery. Such pictures were not then,
as they are now, mere reflections of the historic past, but contained
matter of stirring present interest. Nelson himself was alive, though
to die in the coming October.
These two hundred and seventy-five drawings have long been
dispersed, beyond all power to trace more than a very few. Some,
perhaps, have perished, and of what remain many are sadly faded, we
may be sure. Beyond a meagre tradition, little is left to give us an
estimate of what this first exhibition was like, or the actual quality
of its contents, except bare names as they stand in the catalogue, and
some knowledge of what 'their owners did in after years. But even
from the titles of their works we can tell something of the painter's
intentions. It is noteworthy how some of them are in the habit of
specifying among the chief motives of their pictures, the kind of
weather, the time of day, and the various ' effects ' under which the
scene they depict is represented. Among Barret's works, for example,
we have ' An Evening Effect,' ' A Twilight Effect,' ' A Mountain
Scene after Rain.' Of Glover's, such notes enter into more than half
the descriptions. ' Morning,' ' Stormy Sunset,' 'Evening,' 'Mid-day,'
1 Mr. Jenkins saw one of these drawings of Wells's, the ' Fortress of Frederickshall on the
frontier of Norway, where Charles XII. lost his life,' long afterwards at the house of its
possessor Mr. Henry Elliot, a lifelong friend of Wells's, to whom it was presented by the
artist's family after his death. Mr. Elliot stated that he had known the drawing for more
than thirty years, but could observe no change in its appearance. Mr. Jenkins describes
it as ' representing a mountainous country, fir woods and water, under the effect of evening,
when the sun touches with a mellow light the distant hill -tops, and pencils with deeper gold
the glowing stems of the pine forests ; — a work that favourably displays the artist's power
over colour and effect. ' (J. J. J. MSS. )
CH. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 207
1 A Partial Shower,' ' Thunderstorm at Sunset,' ' Moonlight,' ' Snow,'
' Singular Effect of a Thunderstorm,' ' Sunshine and Distant Rain,'
' Still, warm Evening.' All these memoranda occur in titles of his
drawings in this first exhibition. And Pocock, like a true sailor, duly
notes the distinctions of ' breeze ' and ' gale ' and ' storm,' and whether
they be ' fresh ' or ' strong.' That Nicholson made his mark, we learn
on the evidence of Pyne, who tells us that 'the discovery of ' that
painter's ' process for preserving the heightenings pure and clean in
touch threw a light upon this department of study. From the time
his drawings appeared upon the walls of the first exhibition of the
Society, many of its members, professors of landscape, wrought their
elegant designs with a greater degree of force and effect.' The powers
and capacities in the materials which they exhibit had, he contends,
been developed by Nicholson alone.1
What was the contemporary verdict, as to the comparative merits of
the sixteen painters now brought together, it would be difficult to
discover ; for there were not then the host of art journals and a
critics that we have now, to gauge or guide the public taste. But a
tecord has been preserved, in the Society's minutes, of the estimates
made by the artists themselves of the value of their own work. In
accordance with the rule, wise or otherwise, which had been prescribed
for the distribution of any available residue of profits, each member
had to make a valuation of his accepted works. The aggregate
amount of these valuations was 2,86o/., whereof Shelley set himself
down as contributing a share of attraction worth 743/. 8s. ; Glover's
estimate was So//. 3^. ; and others named smaller sums, down to a
modest 44/. 12s. 6d. by Cornelius Varley. These various sums, on
being compared with the numbers of drawings sent in by the different
members, give for each the average price per exhibit, and the conse-
quent order of self-estimation, appearing in the following list.
I.
Shelley .
.£26
10
6
9-
Wells .
. £7
o
O
2.
Glover .
. 22
I
0
10.
Cristall .
. 6
13
o
3-
Pocock .
• 13
o
o
it.
Havell .
• S
H
o
4-
Nattes .
. 12
2
6
12.
Nicholson
• S
12
o
5-
Hills .
. 10
18
o
13-
J. Varley
4
14
o
6.
Rigaud .
. 10
2
6
H.
Barret .
• 4
9
6
7-
Gilpin .
• 9
18
o
IS-
Pyne
• 4
8
o
8.
Holworthy
• 9
o
o
1 6.
C. Varley.
• 3
14
o
Somerset House Gazette, i. 30, 31.
2o8 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
On this showing, the average price of a drawing was about
IO/. us. It need scarcely be said that the foregoing table of pre-
cedence does not in all cases agree with the verdict of posterity as
to the merits of the artists named therein.
The exhibition closed on the 8th of June, and the founders met
to ascertain their position. They had never ventured to hope that, in
its early stages, their enterprise would do more than pay its expenses.
They must therefore have been agreeably surprised to find that the
public admissions had been so numerous as to bring to the door a sum
of more than 577/., and leave in the treasurer's hands, after all expenses
paid, a surplus of nearly 2721. This sum, in accordance with the above-
mentioned rule, was duly divided among the members, in shares
varying from 5/. "js. 6d. to 6i/. iSs. 6d. proportioned to the declared
values of their contributions to the gallery.
Encouraged by this success, the founders began to prepare on a
larger scale for a second exhibition in the ensuing year. At the
first anniversary meeting, on the soth of November, it was resolved
that the number of contributors should be augmented by the forma-
tion of a new class, called ' FELLOW-EXHIBITORS.' They were not
to exceed sixteen, and from them future Members were to be chosen.
Their privilege to exhibit did not extend to more, it seems, than five
drawings at a time. It was further agreed that two Members should
thus be added every year until their number should reach twenty-
four, beyond which limit there was to be no further extension.
Gilpin, Shelley, and Hills were reappointed to their respective offices
of President, Treasurer, and Secretary ; and with Pocock, Glover,
and John Varley, constituted the new Committee.
On the 3Oth of December,1 1805, the following nine artists were
selected, out of sixteen candidates proposed by the different members,
for Associate-Exhibitors,2 namely : Anne Frances Byrne, John James
Chalon, William Delamotte, Robert Freebairn, Paul Sandby Munn,
Richard Ramsay Reinagle, John Smith, Francis Stevens, and from
John Thurston.
ANNE FRANCES BYRNE was one of a family of artistic children
1 By reason of elections having taken place at the end of the year previous to that in
which an exhibitor's name can first appear in the catalogue, slight errors of dates have some-
times been made in biographies hitherto published.
2 The name ' Fellow- Exhibitor' is used in the first two years' catalogues, and 'Associate-
Exhibitor ' afterwards.
en. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 209
left by the William Byrne who engraved Hearne's 'Antiquities of
Great Britain.' Scarcely three months before his daughter's election
he had died in Titchfield Street, at the age of about sixty-two, while
engaged in producing the first part of a series of prints, which were
continued for a number of years, under the title Britannia Depicta.
It contained views by Hearne, Turner, Farington, John Smith, and
Alexander, but latterly by Farington alone. Other eminent line
engravers, including Middiman, Landseer, and Pye, were afterwards
employed on the work, together with three of William Byrne's
children, John, Elizabeth, and Letitia Byrne. It will be necessary to
speak further of John Byrne, the youngest, and the only boy of the
family, as a water-colour painter.
Anne Frances was the eldest child, and born in London in 1775
(the birth year of Turner and Girtin). She seems to have taken to
art con amore, giving up for its practice a course of more lucrative
teaching in which she had been engaged, and devoting herself to
painting fruit and flowers in water-colours. She had exhibited such
subjects since 1796 at the Royal Academy, and now took her place
as the first representative of that branch of art in the Society's annual
show. ' Her flowers,' says Redgrave, who gives us the above facts in
his Dictionary, ' were well grouped, and with great richness of colour
combine a charming freshness ; but, with the exception of a bird
exhibited on one or two occasions, her art was confined to fruit and
flowers.' There is a study of flowers by her at South Kensington
grouped after the manner of the Dutch painters De Heem and Van
Huysum, and embellished with as liberal a sprinkling of bees, butter-
flies, dewdrops, and other minute accessories, as one is apt to look
for in the works of those masters. It appears that flower-pieces were
not encouraged in the early days of the Society, and that the admis-
sion of Miss Byrne's works was made a special exception to a rule
relative to their exclusion. The rule was, however, rescinded in
January 1809. Miss Byrne, was moreover the first lady-artist who
had been admitted into the Society, and as such was held to occupy
a peculiar position. The special provisions applicable to her class,
while they assumed disabilities of her sex in the conduct of business,
which are in modern times less rigidly insisted on, were not wanting
in chivalrous generosity. ' Ladies associate-exhibitors,' says the
writer of an early notice of the Society,1 ' as they can never share
1 See Microcosm of London (1808), ii. 33.
P
210 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
actively in the management of the Society's affairs, are not eligible
as members ; but from the moment of their election they become
entitled to partake of the profits of the exhibition in the same pro-
portion as the members, while they are exempt from the trouble of
official duties, and from every responsibility whatever on account of
any losses incurred by the Society.'
The name Chalon is more commonly associated, in the history of
modern painting, with Alfred Ed-ward Chalon, the younger of two
brothers, of whom the new exhibitor, JOHN JAMES CHALON, was
the elder. The two were, however, so closely united in many respects
that it is not easy to treat of one without the other. Alfred attained
to higher distinction, enjoying Court patronage, and a unique position
as the fashionable portrait painter in water-colours. John, though a
clever designer, did not exhibit many pictures, and was little appre-
ciated by the public. But he and his merit as an artist were widely
known and recognized in the private and professional circles wherein
the brothers moved as inseparable companions during their long lives.
John Chalon was twenty-seven (Varley's age) when he was chosen
as an associate. Alfred was nearly five years younger. They had
been entered as students of the Royal Academy (whereof both were
in after years to become full members) in 1796 and 1 797 respectively ;
both having, like so many other successful artists, abandoned the
drudgery of commercial pursuits to follow their common bent.
They came of a Huguenot family ' who left France on the revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes, and long resided in Geneva, where ' both
the artist brothers were born. Their 'grandfather served as a
volunteer in a French Protestant regiment in Ireland, under King
William III., and was wounded at the battle of the Boyne. On the
reverses which followed the French Revolution in 1789 the family
came to England, and the father was appointed professor of the
French language and literature at the Royal Military College, Sand-
hurst, and afterwards settled with his family at Kensington.' '
John Chalon had as yet shown himself only as a painter in oils,
having exhibited at the Academy in that medium since 1800. At
first he had some figure pictures there of the genre class, but in 1804
or 1805 his works had all been landscapes, and it is chiefly as a land-
scape painter that he now joined the water-colour school.
1 Redgrave's Dictionary.
CH I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 211
ROBERT FREEBAIRN also belonged to the landscape class, and
was in the main a painter in oil. He was of the earlier generation,
had been a pupil of Wilson's, the last that master taught, and on his
death in 1782 had gone to Italy to study. From that year he sent
pictures to the Royal Academy, and returning to London in 1792 he
continued to exhibit Italian landscapes at Somerset House. He was
forty when he joined the Society. His place was not in the front
rank. But Redgrave describes his works as ' carefully and neatly
finished,' and his colour ' brilliant and pleasing.' Hakewill in his
'Tour' couples Freebairn with Wilson, Cozens, and Smith as one of
the great depictors of Italy.
WILLIAM DELAMOTTE'S surname implies, like Chalon's, a French
extraction.1 He was a young man of five-and-twenty, who had, two
years before, been appointed drawing master at the Great Marlow
Military Academy. He had previously lived at Oxford. Wales,
Cumberland, and Derbyshire had been his rural sketching grounds,
and Girtin's works the models of his style. Like that painter, he had
also sketched in Paris during the short Peace of Amiens in 1802 ; and
some half-dozen views of Oxford,2 which with Welsh and other land-
scapes he had exhibited at Somerset House between 1796 and 1805
showed him capable of strengthening the architectural element in the
Society. Delamotte had begun his art-education as an Academy
student, and had even been for a short time a pupil of West's, but
had taken to modern landscape as a branch of art more suited to his
abilities than the severer school to which such teaching naturally led.
Little is known of PAUL SANDBY MUNN, except that he had
lived at Greenwich, and had since 1798 been exhibiting, at the
Academy, landscape drawings of picturesque subjects, cottages and
the like, from the Isle of Wight, the English Lakes, and North
Wales. His baptismal name provokes speculation, in seeming
to point to a family connexion with landscape art. There was,
indeed, a James Munn, who exhibited six landscape drawings in the
old societies' galleries from 1764 to 1774; and Redgrave plausibly
1 The name Delamotte occurs among those of the many French Huguenot refugees who
settled at Canterbury. (Kershaw's French Protestants in their English Homes, p. 135.)
1 A plate of ' Oxford, from Ferry Ilinksey,' in the Beauties of England and Wales, is
dated 1834.
r 2
212 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805 1812 BK. iv
suggests that this may have been a relation. Possibly it was his father.
The younger Munn is said to have died at the age of seventy-two in
1845, and could thus have been born within a year of the time when
the elder ceased to exhibit, and perhaps to live. It may be that he
was a devotee of Sandby's art, and desired to dedicate his infant son
to service at the same shrine. It would be easy to weave a pretty
romance to suit the case. But there is no tradition to support it, and
it must be confessed that Munn junior, though he painted agreeably
in the old-fashioned way, did not inherit the talent of a Sandby, any
more than did Raphael Smith, or Claude Nattes, or Anthony Vandyke
Fielding, or Julius Cczsar1 Ibbetson repeat the greatness of the names
their parents had given them.
Munn was employed as a topographic draftsman by Britton, in
whose Beauties of England and Wales are eight plates after his
drawings or sketches, with the following dates of publication,
namely : ' Stoke Park ' (sketched by Britton), 1 802 ; ' Fowey Har-
bour,' ' Llanercost,' ' Wolford Lodge, Devon,' ' The Monnow Bridge
&c., Monmouthshire,' ' Buildwas Abbey, Salop,' ' Wenlock Abbey,
Salop,' 1803, and ' Farleigh House, Somerset,' 1813.
RICHARD RAMSAY REINAGLE is another painter whose baptism
records artistic descent ; for his second name is doubtless derived
from the fact that his father had been a pupil of Allan Ramsay,
portrait painter to the Court of King George the Third. The father
was Philip Reinagle, A.R.A., and afterwards R.A., to each of which
suffixes the son also became, for a time at least, entitled.
The earlier painter of the name, during a career of about fifty-five
years, which began with the exhibition of a work in 1773, seems to
have studied nature, for subjects on his canvas, in a descending order
through creation. For, beginning with portraiture of the lords there-
of, he after a time found greater fascination in lower types of life,
painting horses, hunting-pieces, dogs, and birds, till, abandoning the
animal kingdom, he subsided into landscape, and then illustrated a
book on botany. He assisted Barker in some of his panoramas.2
He had a wonderful knack, too, of copying Dutch pictures ; and
1 Ibbetson is said to have owed his heroic preenomen to the fact that he was brought into
the world by the Caesarian operation. One might cite the cases, too, of Michael Angela
Rooker and John Buonarotti Papworth, were it not that the second name was in theirs a
sobriquet added after baptism.
1 Sandby's History of the Royal Academy, i. 345.
CH. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 213
his reproductions of the small cattle-pieces and landscapes of that
school pass as originals.
Young Reinagle's taste seems to have obtained its direction from
some of these later phases of his father's practice, and the opportuni-
ties of study which were given him accordingly. He was born on the
igth of March, 1775, and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy
in 1788, when he was but thirteen. As a young man he sketched
in Italy and in Holland ; and his style in the landscapes which
chiefly engaged his prolific pencil showed signs of both these educa-
tional influences. His art, it need scarcely be said, was far from being
confined to water-colours. He painted in oils ; and had also worked
in distemper on Robert Barker's panoramas.1 In 1802, indeed, he
had joined partnership with that artist's eldest son, Thomas Edward
Barker, and set up, in a building afterwards converted into the Strand
Theatre, a rival establishment to that in Leicester Square.2
With JOHN SMITH we have already made some acquaintance.
He was the ' Warwick ' or ' Italian ' Smith whose name is associated
with the great reform which was taking place in the practice of water-
colour drawing at the close of the last century. A notice of his
antecedents and method of work has already been given.3 Now that
the Society appeared to be established, he overcame his shyness, and
allowed himself to be a candidate for admission. But he did not
exercise the privilege of exhibiting until more than a year after it
was acquired.
FRANCIS STEVENS, born 21 Nov. 1781 (possibly at Exeter, as
he was called ' Stevens of Exeter,' and lived there at one time 4), was
another and a clever landscape draftsman, a pupil of Munn's, whose
address, at 107 Bond Street, is that which he gives in the catalogue
for 1806. He exhibited five studies and views at the Royal Academy
in 1804 and 1805, from Middlesex, Yorkshire, and Notts. Rustic
architecture was apparently his forte ; and his first contributions to
the Society showed that he had sketched in Yorkshire and elsewhere.
There is at the South Kensington Museum a rather elaborate drawing
by him of ' A Devonshire Cottage ' dated 1 806, probably one of the
1 One of his panoramic views was of Rome. There is a copy of the printed ' Explana-
tion ' of it at the British Museum, 8vo, 1800 (?).
'* This Strand concern was sold in 1816 to Henry Aston Barker and John Burford.
1 See Book I., chap. vi. * Redgrave's Dictionary.
214 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
identical works contributed on his election. It is harmonious and
warm in tone, ' painted in local colour, the lights boldly taken out ; '
but the figures are too small for the buildings.
JOHN THURSTON was of the figure department, and represented,
though incompletely, the school of illustration which was wanting in
the first exhibition. He had been a copper-plate engraver, and
worked with James Heath, on whose ' Death of Major Pierson ' and
' Dead Soldier ' his burin was employed. But he was chiefly known
as a designer of book illustrations, for the most part ' drawn on the
block for wood-engraving. The following works contain cuts from his
designs : Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 8vo (Tegg), 1804 (frontis-
piece); Thomson's Seasons, royal 8vo, 1805 (cuts by Bewick);
Beattie's Minstrel, 4to, 1807 (cuts by Clennell) ; Rev. J. Thomas's
Religious Emblems, 4to, Ackermann, 1809 (cuts by Branston, Clennell,
and Nesbit) ; G. Marshall's Epistles in Verse (cuts by Branston) ;
G. A. Stevens's Lecture on Heads, 1 2mo (47 cuts of heads by Nesbit).
He seems, at the time of his election, to have been preparing a set of
small groups for an edition of Shakspere, published by Whitting-
ham in 1814. Five such groups were what he sent to the exhibition
of 1806. Most likely they were in his usual manner,2 tinted over
Indian ink. These were the only drawings he exhibited with the
Society. His figures were neatly executed with a firm line, but too
often wanting in natural expression. He was born at Scarborough
in 1774, had sixteen works at the Royal Academy between 1794 and
1829, and died at Holloway in 1822.
With these additions to their number, the Society proceeded with
the arrangements for their second exhibition, to take place in the
ensuing season. They had already been seeking for a more com-
modious gallery than that in Brook Street, and had applied to Mr.
Christie the auctioneer for the rooms then held by him in Pall Mall,
the same that had been occupied by the Royal Academy before its
removal to Somerset House. Unable, however, to come to terms in
time, they had to fall back upon the former for one more exhibition,
under a fresh lease of io/. a week from Mr. Tresham. But (as
1 There are four designs of his engraved in stipple by Ridley in an edition of Zimmer-
mann's Solitude, 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. (Vernor and Hood), 1804, 1805.
2 Dr. Percy had an illustration by him of Swift's Tale of a Tub, ' 4-45 x 8-45— outlined
with pencil and pen, and tinted.' (Percy Catalogue.)
CH. I
IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806
215
announced in a fly-leaf of the catalogue for 1806) they secured the
old Academy rooms for the following year.
The exhibitors, generally speaking, had had good reason to be
satisfied with the success of their first venture. Glover appears to
have been so much so, that he gave up his establishment at Lichfield,
and settled himself in London, at No. 3 Montagu Square. The
result was not so satisfactory to one at least of the other members.
It was no benefit to poor Gilpin. The apparent inferiority of his
performances to those of some, at least, of his companions in art, had
the effect of alienating his pupils. He lost much of his great practice
as a drawing master, and of the extensive connexion which he had
commanded through his uncle the Academician, and his brother the
literary amateur. He continued indeed to exhibit drawings with the
Society, but the move he made was the reverse of Glover's. He retired
from town to settle in the country, accepting an engagement as a
drawing master at the Royal Military College, Great Marlow, sub-
ordinate, it is presumed, to that of William Delamotte. On the
24th of March, 1806, on thus leaving London, he vacated the presi-
dential chair, much to the Society's regret. Pocock was chosen to
supply his place ; but he refusing the post, they elected Wells.
The second ' annual ' exhibition, still at Brook Street, opened on
Monday, the 2ist of April, and closed on Saturday, the I4th of June,
1806. The 301 pictures which it contained were contributed in the
following proportions ; prolific John Varley again heading the list with
even one more than in 1805, and Hills rising to the second place with
almost as many.
J. Varley . . 43 Gilpin . .10 Chalon . . 5
Hills . . .40 Havell . . 10 Munn . . 5
Nicholson. . 26 Pyne . . . 10 Reinagle . . 5
Pocock . . 24 Cristall . . 9 Stevens . . 5
Glover . . 20 Shelley . . 9 Thurston . . 5
Barret . .18 Rigaud . . 8 Freebairn . . 3
Wells . .17 Holsworthy . 7 Delamotte . . 2
Nattes . . 12 C. Varley . . 7 Miss Byrne . i
The strength of the collection lay again, we may be sure, in the
sound broad treatment of landscape, real and imaginary, by Varley
and Havell ; in the repose and sunshine of Barret's classic drawings
216 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
in Nicholson's views, powerful and deep in tone ; and Glover's less
solid, but luminous and suggestive realizations of nature.
One of the chief things that strike the eye, on a perusal of the
list, is that nearly one-half of John Varley's works are now described
as ' compositions.' The same thing was to happen in the end of that
artist's career, when, having nearly ceased to sketch from nature, he
relied almost entirely on his memory and imagination. But the fancy
drawings of this early period were of a different class. They had in
all probability been examples given to his pupils in certain general
principles of landscape art, which he practised himself, and taught
as their expositor, and which were recognized, as the rules of common
guidance, by the school whereof he and the leading members of the
Society constituted the core. One of Cristall's drawings, representing
youths bathing, illustrative of some lines in Thomson's 'Summer,'
Pyne speaks of as 'a design that would have done credit to any
of our ancient schools,' and could not have been expressed in a
better medium for the purpose than water-colour.1 Shelley seems to
have drawn so largely already on his stock of imaginative pictures,
that he now sends but two (a ' Holy Family,' and ' Love disappointed"
after the flattering tale told by Hope, a subject suggested by a
popular ballad of the time), and makes up his number with portraits ;
while Rigaud represents the Death of Nelson, in due allegoric form,
the King of Terrors inverting his torch, and Victory and eternal Fame
assisting at the ceremony.
When the exhibition closed and the committee again took stock, it
was found, that there were 12,439 checks of admission, which, as before
at one shilling, would produce 62 1/. 19^. And the sale of catalogues,
for which an extra sixpence was now demanded, increased the gross
receipts to 7647. ids. A balance of 44O/. 3^., after paying expenses,
was divided, in like manner as before, among the sixteen members,
with the addition of Miss Byrne, who seems to have been allowed to
participate under the polite arrangement above mentioned.
The principle of apportionment, however, dependent as it was upon
each member's estimate of his own works, was already beginning to
be scrutinized. It was naturally considered that the portraits, of
which Shelley had sent so large a number, and which could not fairly
be said to promote the Society's objects, did not justly entitle him to
a share of profits on their account. Resolutions to that effect were
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 195.
CH. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 217
passed by two general meetings in the ensuing spring. The imme-
diate result was that Shelley resigned the treasurership, much to the
Society's regret. He was replaced in that office by Reinagle, who,
together with ' Warwick ' Smith, had been raised to the rank of
Member at the anniversary meeting of i Dec. 1806. Glover, John
Varley, Cristall, and Barret were the committee for 1807.
On the 23rd of March in that year, Thomas Heaphy and Augustus
Pugin were selected as new Associates, out of nineteen candidates.
This choice added in each case to the artistic strength of the Society ;
in the former to the figure department, in the latter to that of archi-
tectural delineation.
We are apt to boast, with good reason, of the native origin and
character of our British school of water-colours. Yet several of its
best practitioners have been of foreign descent. It was so with both
these artists. THOMAS HEAPHY came from the Huguenot colony of
silkweavers in Spitalficlds, settled there after the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. His father, John Heaphy, and mother (a Frenchwoman
whose maiden name was Katharine Gerard), lived in the parish of
Cripplegate, where Thomas was born. The date of that event is set
down by Redgrave in his Dictionary as 29 December, I775> proba-
bly on sufficient evidence ; though in an earlier account given of him
in the Century of Painters it was, on the authority, it seems, of the
artist's son, stated to have been ' about 1779-80.' 'In his early years,'
writes the son, in some manuscript memoranda, communicated also
to Mr. Jenkins, 'he showed some inclination for art; and his father,
doubtless with the intention of utilizing this predilection, apprenticed
him to a dyer. This occupation being distasteful to him, his
indentures were cancelled, and he was shortly after apprenticed to
Meadows ' the engraver, who had acquired reputation by his engrav-
ings from the works of Richard Wcstall.' Long after, on seeing the
series of Westall's Sacraments on sale at the European Museum,
Heaphy pointed them out to Pyne as ' old acquaintances,' saying, ' I
worked many a month — nay, even for some years, on the large plates
from these identical drawings.' 2
1 Robert Mitchell Meadows engraved in the stipple manner for Boydell's Shakespeare
Gallery, and after Westall, Hamilton, and others, and attained much distinction. He
published in 1809 three lectures on engraving, and died some time before 1812. (Red-
grave's Dictionary, )
• Somerset House Gazette, \, 354.
218 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 UK. iv
But young Heaphy, to whom the canvas was more attractive
than the copper, used to spend the evenings, when he had done his
master's work, at a place of instruction in art somewhere in Finsbury,
conducted by a painter of the name of Simpson.1 It seems to have
been a good school, for it turned out several scholars well known after-
wards in the profession ; among them H. Ross, father of Sir W. C.
Ross, R.A., and like his son a miniature painter.2
Heaphy moreover began to paint portraits, and exhibited them at
Somerset House yearly, from 1797, when he made his debut with a
likeness of himself. With this exception, his sitters are for the most
part female, and for some years exclusively so. In 1799 he sends
a ' Portrait of Miss Stephenson,' and in 1800 one of ' Mrs. Heaphy,'
together with ' Mrs. Meadows,' probably the wife of his master, the
engraver. Miss Stephenson and Mrs. Heaphy were, in fact, one and
the same person. She was the sister of a fellow-student at Simpson's,
and Heaphy married her while he was still an apprentice.3
He had now to earn his bread, and for a time managed to subsist
by colouring popular prints, on soft paper, after Westall's pictures.
He was what was called a ' soft-print toucher.' When his time had
expired at the engraver's he also became a student at the Royal
Academy. While in the schools there, he gained no distinction in
the shape of medal or premium, for he chose rather to follow his own
ideas than conform to the prescribed course and tread the beaten
track of study. The works of Westall, which he had had to observe
so carefully, had not bred in his mind a reverence for the old masters.
It was, indeed, too much the practice of eminent figure painters in his
day to neglect the study of nature. In works of the fashionable
class, of which Westall's drawings may be taken as the type, they
were wont ' to adopt a certain conventional style of feature, even in
the most familiar subjects, that stood in the stead of expression and
individuality.' Against this and the teaching which led to it, Heaphy
rebelled ; and he passed the better part of his life in earnest and
active hostility to the Royal Academy, and what he called ' academic
1 It has also been stated that Heaphy was a pupil of a Mr. Boyne, who held a draw-
ing school in Gloucester Street, Queen Square. See Arnold's Magazine of the Fine Arts,
p. 222, ' Neglected Biography.' But his son does not mention this school.
2 This is the account given by Heaphy's son, who adds the name of Thomas Uwins, R.A. ,
among Simpson's scholars ; but we find no reference to this alleged fact in Mrs. Uwins's life
of her husband.
3 His son spells the name Stevenson.
CH. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 219
art.' Copying a motionless model, artificially posed in the studio, was
not, as it seemed to him, drawing ' from the life.' For the subjects of
his pencil he betook himself to the fields and the sea beach, and
having an eye to the varied appearance of the world he lived in, gave
to his original works a vitality and freshness to which the public had
not been accustomed among figure draftsmen, at least not in those
above the rank of caricaturists, like Rowlandson. Before the time
of his entering the Society, however, this side of his art seems scarcely
to have been presented to the public.
His son writes that his first subject-picture in water-colours was
painted when he was about twenty-one or twenty-two, and represented
a girl stooping over a river's bank to gather a water-lily. Except ' The
Portland Fish Girl' in 1804, and perhaps a study called 'Watchful-
ness ' in 1803, we find nothing of his of an earlier date in the Academy
catalogues, except portraits. But in the latter department he had
been rising rapidly. From portraying himself (which he did again in
1 80 1 ), and his wife, and such ordinary folk, he had ascended to a
more exalted patronage. In 1802 he represents in one picture the
Russian Ambassador, Count Woronzow, and the Countess, Lady
Palmerston, the Hon. W. and Miss Temple, and Lady Lavington ;
and the next year he appears as ' Portrait Painter to the Princess of
Wales,' and exhibits portraits of her Royal Highness and other persons
of rank. It is, however, exclusively as a painter of subjects from
humble, or, it might more correctly be said, from low, life, that he was
to make his appearance in the Society's exhibitions. Portraits, as we
have seen, had been virtually excluded from the walls by what lawyers
might call the ' rule in Shelley's case.' He had ' struck out,' says
Pyne, ' a new and a pleasing style of execution, and manifested an
excellent feeling for colouring. Indeed, he gave great presage of
future excellence, by a very original path.' l His sentiment was not
refined, but his works would at least be a relief to the conventional
quality of Shelley's and of Rigaud's.
AUGUSTUS PUGIN was a Frenchman, at that time chiefly en-
gaged in making professional drawings for Mr. John Nash, who built
Regent Street, and was then rapidly acquiring his extensive business
and fashionable repute.
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 194.
220 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY 1805-1812 P,K. iv
Pugin was according to some authorities thirty-eight, and toothers
forty-five or so, when he joined the Society.1 He came of a good
family, being descended from ' a nobleman who raised a hundred
soldiers for the service of Fribourg,' and for whose valour in defeating
the same number of cavalry at Morat, besieged by Charles, Duke of
Burgundy, in 1477, ' the senators augmented his arms (fun oiseau
sable.' 2 When a young man in France he is said to have associated
with distinguished artists, to have been intimate with David, and a
companion of Isabey's. Monsieur Lafitte, a member of the Legion
of Honour, and one of the household of the Emperor Napoleon I.,
who ' designed among other works the panel decorations of the
" Arc de Triomphe " in the Place de Carrousel,' was his brother-in-
law, and is said to have given him much instruction.3 How he came
to leave the land of his forbears (the ancestral black bird notwith-
standing), has been variously related. Ferrey the architect (who was
his pupil) reports that in the French Revolution Pugin fought for the
king, and falling, was thrown with some hundred bodies into a pit
near the Place de la Bastille, but swam the Seine, fled to Rouen, and
thence escaped to England.4 But the late Charles J. Mathews, the
actor (another pupil), tells a different story. He says that Pugin,
' having fought a duel in Paris, which ended fatally, sought refuge in
England, landed on the Welsh coast, and having great talent as an
artist, earned his living for the time being by his pencil.' 5
When Pugin first came to this country his condition was forlorn
enough. He was a typical Frenchman of the ancien regime, with ' a
three-cornered hat, a muff, a gold-headed cane,' and little or no know-
ledge of the English tongue. For some time his friends were unable
to communicate with him ; for when he called for his letters, the
country postmaster failed to recognize, in his pronunciation, any hint
of the name inscribed on a pile of correspondence that stood waiting
to be claimed by its rightful owner, ' Mr. Puggen.' The story was
afterwards told by Pugin to his friend Charles Mathews, the elder
comedian of that name, who made from it one of his most celebrated
1 Benjamin Ferrey, in his Recollections of Welby and Augtistus Pugin (p. l), gives the
date 1762 as that of the latter's birth; but states (p. 101) that he died in December 1832,
' at the age of 63.' Redgrave takes 1762 to be the true date. Other compilers give 1769.
1 Ferrey's Recollections of the Pugins. There is in the Art Library at South Kensington
a copy of The Magazine of Fine Arts, vol. i. (1821), with a book-plate of the arms of
' Augustus de Pugin,' and the motto 'En avant.' 3 Ibid. pp. 30, 31.
* Ibid. p. 2. 5 Dickens's Life of C. J, Mathews, \. 39.
en. I IN BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 221
impersonations, combining humour and pathos, in the little piece-
called ' Monsieur Malet.' l Pugin, indeed, took credit fora larger share
in the origin of Mathews's ' at homes ; ' for he was even wont to
insist, in after years, that it was from himself that the comedian
acquired his astonishing power of mimicry and personation.2 In
time the refugee succeeded in mastering our language, and spoke it
perfectly, ' as far as volubility was concerned.' So at least says
Mathews the younger (no bad judge of volubility), who knew him
only at a much later date ; adding, however, that after Pugin had
been domesticated in England for some forty years, ' his French
accent and his French idioms were as marked as if he had only
recently arrived. If he talked in his sleep,' says his lively pupil, ' he
talked in French, and in computing money he always mentally
reduced the pounds and shillings into francs before he could ascertain
their exact value.' 3 ' In person ' Pugin ' was remarkably good-looking,
and in manner displayed overwhelming politeness. His foreign shrug
and strong accent often astonished the country people with whom he
was brought in contact.' 4
The precise way in which, and time when, Pugin's acquaintance
was made with John Nash, the architect of Regent Street, which is
said to have led to a twenty years' connexion between them as
fellow-workers, is also a little obscure. Ferrey's account is tolerably
circumstantial. He says that Pugin's attention was arrested by a
newspaper advertisement, intimating that the assistance of a drafts-
man was required in Nash's office, and that a foreigner would be
preferred. Pugin thereupon hastens to the architect's residence, and
in the waiting-room comes across a French nobleman, whom he had
known in Paris, a candidate for the same appointment. Nash weighs
their qualifications, and chooses Pugin.5 If, however, as he adds,
Nash was then ' in the full tide of his prosperity,' and proceeded to
employ Pugin on (among other things) drawings of a proposed
' Waterloo Monument ' — which could not well have been before the
latter part of 1815 — they must have been old friends at the time of
this engagement. For Mathews speaks of Nash as having been (in
times which were ' bygone' in 1819) a ' humble builder of Swansea,'
and of Augustus Pugin as one who ' had painted the scenes for the
1 Ferrey's Recollections of the Pugins, pp. 2-4. 2 Ibid. p. 29.
1 Dickens's Life of C. J. Mathews, p. 42.
4 Ferrey's Recollections of the Fugins, p. 30. 5 Ibid. p. 2
222 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
little Welsh theatre.'1 And Ferrey himself, in another place, gives
to the first acquaintance between Pugin and the elder Mathews the
specific date 1796, when the latter, ' returning from a professional en-
gagement in Ireland, was nearly wrecked on the coast of Wales, and
while at Carmarthen fell in with Nash and Pugin,2 who thus seem
to have been already known to one another. Mathews further says
that his own father, when, 'somewhere about 1797, a struggling actor
on the Welsh circuit, made the acquaintance of Mr. Nash the builder,
at Swansea, who was a great patron of the theatre and occasionally
indulged in amateur performances himself.'3 And he tells us that
Pugin, ' having become a great favourite of and of much use to
Mr. Nash, ultimately accompanied his patron to London, and soon
became the founder of a school of his own creation, and one much
needed and highly patronized.' 4 But this independent position had
not yet been attained. In 1807 Pugin had barely crossed the thres-
hold of his career. He seems already to have been collecting mate-
rials for architectural publications, with which his name is chiefly
associated. To improve such practical knowledge of art as he had
acquired in his native country, he had become a student of the
Royal Academy, and, according to Ferrey, was the companion of
Hilton and of Shee.5 He also put himself under the tuition of an
aquatint engraver called Merigot, probably a refugee like himself,
whom he found living in London, and who had formerly been a
drawing master in his father's family. In the Academy catalogues
his name first appears in 1799, more as that of an architect than a
picturesque draftsman, with a ' Design of an intended Villa in the
North of England.' The next year he has a ' View of Belvidere
House, Lambeth;' but nothing more till 1804, when he enters his
proper field with a view of Westminster Abbey. In 1805 and 1806
he has, each year, three architectural subjects, four of them from
1 Dickens's Life of C. J, Mathews, i. 38. In Dr. Percy's collection were ' Two Studies
for Operatic Scenes,' by A. Pugin.
2 Recollections of the Pugins, p. 29.
3 Ibid. The three acted together in the ' School for Scandal,' Nash being Sir Peter Teazle.
Mathews (the younger) had a playbill naming him for the part, and had heard that he
performed it admirably. Ferrey also mentions such a playbill (ubi supra. ) He says that Nash
had patrons in Wales and acquired property there ; and, being fond of theatrical representa-
tions, built a private theatre, in which Mathews, Pugin and other friends acted for their own
amusement, sometimes inviting the surrounding gentry to witness their performances. (Re-
collections of the Pugins, p. 14.) ' Ibid. p. 40.
5 It is again difficult to reconcile dates. Shee entered the schools in 1790, and Hilton in
1806 (Sandby's History of the Royal Academy}, being a contemporary of De NVint's.
CH. I IX BROOK STREET, 1805, 1806 223
Oxford. In 1807 he exhibits instead at the Water-Colour Society,
beginning with an ' Interior of St. Paul's.'
Of the many books of architectural illustration for which, during
a quarter of a century from this time, he was constantly engaged in
making drawings, and of the important part which he played in the
revival of a taste for the Gothic style, mention will be made in due
time. In the name of his son, A. N. Welby Pugin, the Gothic archi-
tect, that 01 Pugin is known to many who are not aware how excel-
lent an artist the father was in his own department of architectural
drawing. It is as a water-colour draftsman that he here claims our
notice. Some of the designs which he executed for Nash on a large
scale were in body colour.1 But these are exceptional. Mathews
tells us that he produced his effects by the most simple means, con-
fining himself literally to the use of three colours, indigo, light red, and
yellow ochre. ' It would,' he justly adds, ' puzzle some of our modern
water-colour painters to find themselves thus limited.' 2 This par-
ticular combination we now know to be unsafe as regards perma-
nence ; but at the time they were painted, Pugin's drawings were
admired for their colour, as they still deserve to be for their form and
chiaroscuro. 'Architects,' says Mathews, 'flew to him to have their
plans and elevations put into correct perspective, and surrounded
with the well-executed and appropriate landscapes Pugin was so
skilful in producing.' 3
1 Ferrey. 2 Dickens's Life of C. J. Mathews, \. 42. » Ibid. pp. 39, 40.
224 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
CHAPTER II
IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, l8o8.
The old Royal Academy's rooms — Third Exhibition (1807) — Royal sentries — Continued suc-
cess— Nattes expelled — His subsequent career — Glover, President — Heaphy and Chalon
Members— Freebairn dies — Posthumous exhibits — Biographies of new Associates— J. A.
Atkinson— Studies in Russia — Published works — William Turner — Of Oxford — Early
drawings —Fourth Exhibition (1808)— Bond Street rooms — A rival society— The Associ-
ated Artists— Its founding and constitution — Leading Members — Turner and Atkinson,
Members of The Water-Colour Society — Reinagle, President —Delamotte retires— His
subsequent career.
WHILE the Society was thus securing good recruits, active prepara-
tion was being made for its next exhibition, and the shifting of its
quarters to Pall Mall. The old rooms of the Royal Academy, at
No. 118 Pall Mall, which had at length been engaged for the purpose,
were situate on the south side of the street, a little to the eastward
of, or partly overlapping, the site of the United Service Club. The
building adjoined old Carlton House, which stood back, behind an
imposing colonnade on the now open space between that club and
the Athenaeum. The galleries belonged to Mr. Christie, the auc-
tioneer, and had been used as the sale rooms of that celebrated firm
at least as late as 1804, previously to its removal to a house further
to the west in Pall Mall, near to the War Office, adjoining Schomberg
House. James Christie, the founder of the business, died in 1802.
It was his son, James the second, who succeeded him, that let the
rooms to the Water-Colour Society. There are 'several drawings in
the Grace Collection at the British Museum, showing the street front
of the old Royal Academy ; and a cut of it in Mr. Sandby's book.
That writer further refers to a view of the interior in 1771, painted
by Brondoin, and mezzotinted by Earlom, representing a small room,
apparently some thirty feet long, with a central raised skylight, which
was seen from the outside.1 Here the third exhibition opened on the
27th of April, 1807, and it remained open until the I3th of June.
1 Sandby's History of the Royal Academy, \. 125, 131.
CH. II IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, 1808 225
Gilpin, still a Member, though no longer in office, did not with-
draw his goodwill from the Society, but used his interest to give
eclat to the occasion by procuring for it the distinction of sentries
from the King's Guard to stand in the passage that led to the
gallery. The previous success was more than repeated ; 14,366
shillings were taken for admission at the door, beside the moneys for
catalogues ; and 47 1/. 7s. \o\d. was the sum divided ; Glover coming
in for the biggest share, 88/. 6s. ^d. Two rooms were open, hung
with 324 drawings, about half in each. The general character of the
show resembled that of its predecessors ; except that there were now
no portraits ; that ' Warwick ' Smith, now a full Member, exhibited
nineteen works, chiefly subjects of Italian landscape and ancient
remains ; and that rustic figures by Heaphy, and Pugin's one archi-
tectural drawing, were among the Associates' contributions.
One element of a foreign nature had, however, been inadvertently
admitted into the miscellany, which the Society was not slow to
repudiate. On the I7th of June, four days after the close of the
exhibition, a meeting was called, to adjudicate upon a serious charge
against one of the original members, Claude Nattes. It was to the
effect that a great part of the drawings sent by him as his own pro-
ductions were the work of other persons, and had been exhibited
in contravention of the Society's express rule that the works of out-
siders were not admissible, and with a dishonourable intention of
obtaining a larger dividend out of the profits than the exhibitor's
own works would have entitled him to. On this charge Nattes was
found guilty, and the meeting, bearing in mind the declaration laid
down when the Society was founded, that its members were to be
not only of ' professional reputation ' but ' moral character,' passed an
immediate sentence of expulsion. Thus the first member who left
the Society retired in disgrace. Nattes again resorted to Somerset
House for exhibition. His name appears in the Academy catalogues
till 1814, and then is seen no more.
At the anniversary meeting, on the 3oth of November, Glover was
elected President, in the place of Wells, who resigned that office ; and
Heaphy and Chalon were raised to the rank of Members.
The year 1 808 had not long opened, when another loss occurred
by the death of the Associate Robert Freebairn, on the 23rd of January.
It was in relation to this event that a rule was made, allowing
the family of a deceased Member or Associate to exhibit works
Q
226 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
prepared by him for the gallery. Freebairn's widow, however, did not
avail herself of the permission so given to her. He had exhibited
only eight drawings during the two years of his Associateship, nearly
all views in Italy, about Tivoli or Rome.
The Society's numbers were soon replenished by the election, on
the 29th of January, 1808, of two new Associates : John Augustus
Atkinson, and William Turner.
JOHN AUGUSTUS ATKINSON, besides being an oil painter, was
a spirited and powerful sketcher of figures and figure groups, with pen
and brush, in the line and wash manner so admirably adapted to
reproduction by etching and aquatint engraving. ' His light touch,'
says Seguier, ' appears to put everything in motion.' ' Born in
London in 1775 (the birth-year of Turner, Girtin, Heaphy, and
Reinagle), he had gone to Russia when nine years old, and been
patronised by the Empress Catherine, and also by the Emperor Paul
after her death in 1796. He had studied in the gallery at St. Peters-
burg, and there are two pictures by him of subjects from Russian
history in the Michael's Palace. A Russian edition of Hudibras,
published in 1798 at Konigsberg, is mentioned as illustrated by him.3
In the year of Paul's assassination, 1801, Atkinson came home with
sketch-books full of sketches of costumes, and memoranda of social
habits and military scenes, which supplied him with much of
the material for the works whereby he became known in his own
country.
In 1803-4 he brought out, in conjunction with one James Walker
(no relation to William), who had gone to St. Petersburg in the same
year to be engraver to the Empress, and returned at about the same
time, A Picturesque Representation of the Manners, Ciistoms, and
Amusements of the Russians, in 100 coloured plates, which (in an
edition dated 1812) fill three folio volumes. Another publication
in the same style, called A Picturesque Representation of the Naval,
Military, and Miscellaneous Costumes of Great Britain, was now in
course of publication. Volume I., published 1807, contains 50, the
complete work too, coloured plates.
In the same year he had produced a series of sixteen coloured
engravings,3 to illustrate separately, or bind up with, the two volumes
1 Dictionary (i8",o). 2 Redgrave's Dictionary of the English School.
1 Published by Miller in Albemarle Street.
CH. II IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, 1808 227
of Beresford's amusing book, The Miseries of Human Life. They
are etched in soft-ground, and the shadows aquatinted ; and in their
graceful composition, freedom of touch, and delicacy of colour, they
bear some resemblance to the best designs of Rowlandson, without his
coarseness. There is also a folding frontispiece, so etched, by him and
coloured, to an edition of Stultifera Navis, 8vo, 1807. Since 1803 he
had exhibited from three to six works a year at the Royal Academy ;
comprising scenes from classic history, modern military subjects, and
picturesque groups.
WILLIAM TURNER, it need scarcely be said, was not the great
painter of that name. He is usually, by way of distinction, called
' Turner of Oxford,' having been born (at Blackbourton) in that
county on the I2th of November, 1789; and having resided (near
Woodstock) in the same county during the greater part of his life.
He was as yet a very young landscape painter, and had just com-
pleted a term of apprenticeship to John Varley, being one of the
earliest of a series of pupils whom that artist had begun to receive
into his house for training as artists. He is chiefly remembered in
the gallery by his later drawings, generally extensive views, very
painstaking and conscientious, but of a realistic kind, and wanting
in interest as works of art. But his early drawings possess a certain
grandeur and a breadth of composition, obviously the result of the
good training he had thus received. In three of the drawings' which
the young artist exhibited on joining the Society, John Landseer finds
the ' wide range of capacity and contrivance, of a veteran landscape
painter to whom nature has become familiar ; ' adding, more specific-
ally : ' By the dint of his superior art he has rolled such clouds over
these landscapes as has given to a flat country an equal grandeur
with mountain scenery, while they fully account for the striking and
natural effects of light and shade which he has introduced. His
colouring ' adds the critic, ' is grave, subdued, and such as properly
belongs to landscapes of a majestic character.' a
For the exhibition of 1808, the Society had again to shift their
quarters, the old Academy rooms being reported by their surveyor to
be in a dangerous condition, and unfit for further use. After some
1 ' Cornfield near Woodstock,' ' Ottmoor, near Oxford,' and ' Whichwood Fcrest, Oxford-
shire' (exhibited 1808, 1809).
1 The Review of Publications in Art (1808), p. 288.
Q2
228 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
inquiry as to the cost of building a gallery, although the Society had
no funds for that purpose, the Committee engaged for that season, at
the rent of 400 guineas, two large rooms belonging to a Mr. Oakley,
at No. 1 6 Old Bond Street, opposite Stafford Street ; and there
the fourth exhibition was held. The aspect of the gallery at that
time has been preserved to us in a view taken of it by Pugin with
the Committee's sanction. It is enlivened with figures by Rowland-
son, and forms one of a published series of coloured aquatints,
commenced this year and continued till 1810, by these two artists,
under the title Microcosm of London. The number of the house, for
a wonder, is unchanged, and it now contains a lofty, well-proportioned
show-room, the length of which is at right angles to the street. This
may have been, formerly, the ' two large rooms ' so used.
The plate above referred to is numbered 34 in the series, and
entitled ' Exhibition of Water-colour Drawings in Old Bond Street,'
with the imprint 'London, Pub. 1st Sepf 1808 at R. Ackermann's
Repository of Arts, 101 Strand.' ' Rowlandson et Pugin del* et
sculp*. — Stadler Aquat.' It is accompanied by a short account of
the origin and constitution of the Society, and to this is appended a
notice of the inauguration of a second water-colour exhibition which
had sprung into existence in the same season. As many mistakes
have arisen from a confusion between this short-lived rival institution
and the Society whereof the annals are here being traced, as accurate
a synopsis of its history will be included in this volume as can be
obtained from the rather scanty records which still survive.
The movement which gave rise to this new institution has its
counterpart in the formation of more than one body established in
modern times with a similar object. So far, the progress of the
original Society had continued without let or hindrance, and the
obvious advantages of belonging to it could not fail to excite emula-
tion, and probably some envy, among those in the profession who were
left outside the charmed circle. To these, the exclusive nature of the
constitution, under which its walls were reserved entirely for Members
and Associates, appeared to leave room for another exhibition, still
confined to water-colour drawings, but on a more enlarged plan, and
practically open to all members of the profession. It was thought,
moreover, that a society formed on a more comprehensive scale would
ensure a variety the want of which was perceptible in the existing
exhibition, notwithstanding its acknowledged merit. This feeling
CH. II IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, 1808 229
took organic shape at a meeting, which was held on Wednesday the
24th of June, 1807, at the Thatched House Tavern (one William
Wood, a miniature painter, occupying the chair) and resulted in the
following list of names being drawn up as those of the first members
of a new association with the above objects : —
William James Bennett
Henry Pierce Bone
James Green
J. Huet-Villiers
J. Laporte
Andrew Robertson
W. J. Thompson
William Walker
Walter H. Watts
H. W. Williams
William Wood
At a second or adjourned meeting, held on the 1st of July, it was
resolved that the Society should be confined to proficient artists in
water-colours or chalks, and it seems to have been at this time
intended to make a direct attack upon the status of the existing body,
by the assumption, without qualification, of the same title that it
had chosen, ' The Society of Painters in Water-Colours' It is probable
that this assumption has been at the root of some of the confusion
above mentioned as existing between the two Societies. But the
title was soon modified, and abandoned. First it was changed to
' The Nezv Society of Painters in Miniature and Water-Colours ; ' and
then, on the I4th of January, 1808, a resolution was passed : 'That
the temporary title of the Society be discontinued, and the
following adopted in its room : ASSOCIATED ARTISTS IN WATER-
COLOURS.' Another source of confusion lies in the fact that the
' Associated Artists ' came into visible being at the very same place
as the original Society. They, too, held their first exhibition at Mr.
Tresham's rooms, No. 20 Lower Brook Street, and they also after-
wards removed to Bond Street, occupying there, for at least three
years, the Society's former quarters at No. 16.
Except that the number of members was to be without limit, and
was to be increased from time to time by the addition of those among
the exhibitors whose works should be most conspicuous, the laws of
the new Society were for the most part similar to those of the old. A
higher tribute was however paid to the capacity of its lady-members,
who were held entitled to vote on all occasions with the lords of the
creation.
The first exhibition was optncd on the 2$th of April, 1808. The
230
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
BK. IV
number of exhibited works was 273, among which miniatures
played an important part.
There were then eighteen members ; and to these were added
another eighteen as ' fellow-exhibitors.' The following are the two
lists, as given in the catalogue.
MEMBERS.
William Wood, President
James Green, Treasurer
Andrew Robertson, Secretary
William James Bennett '
Henry P. Bone
Alfred Chalon
Mrs. Green
J. Huet-Villiers
John Laporte
Samuel Owen
John Papvvorth
Miss Emma Smith
William John Thomson
William Walker, junior^
Walter Henry Watts
William Westall '
H. W. Williams a
Andrew Wilson
W. Annis
Tho. Baxter
R. Dagley
P. Dewint '
Geo. Dinsdale
L. Francia
Miss Gartside
E. Goodwin
J. Hewlett
EXHIBITORS.
J. Holmes1
J. Leschallas
Fred. Nash '
Wm. Pearson
Jos. Powell
J. C. Schetky
J. Clarendon Smith
D. Thompson
C. Turner
Among the above names will be recognized those of some artists
with whom we have already made acquaintance. Among them are
Alfred E. Chalon (John's more distinguished brother), and the draw-
ing master Laporte. There is also Louis Francia, whose career has
been sketched in connexion with Girtin's. Samuel Owen was another
sea-painter in whose works may be recognized the same fine feeling
for composition that was displayed by the master just named : and
John Christian Schekty was an eminent and loving depicter of the
1 These were all in after times Members or Associates of the Water-Colour Society.
2 Hugh William Williams (born 1773, died 1829), known as 'Grecian Williams,' and
afterwards in much repute in Edinburgh, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Water-Colour
Society in 1807. (Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists.)
CH. II IN PALL MALL AND BOND STREET, 1807, 1808 231
wooden walls of England.1 Henry P. Bone (afterwards Court enamel-
painter, as his father, Henry Bone, R.A., was before him) and John
Buonarotti Papivortli (architect and ornamental draftsman) are other
well-known names in the list of members ; and of some of the
remainder much will be said in future chapters.
An advertisement, of which the following is the material part, was
prefixed to the catalogue : ' The members of this Society think it
proper to state, that in forming the present exhibition they were not
influenced by any sentiment of hostility or opposition to the society
which originated a few years ago under a similar appellation. The
rapid advance which this class of art had made, its powers of reach-
ing greater excellence, if judiciously employed, and the propriety of
separating drawings and pictures in water-colours from the immediate
contact of those produced with other materials, were probably the
motives for forming that society : the same opinions, the same feelings
led to the association of the artists, who now, for the first time as a
distinct body, submit their works to public inspection. . . .
' The Society will listen with respectful deference to the public
opinion, and repeat or withdraw their pretensions accordingly."
A contemporary writer, favourable to the new scheme, declares
that in its first year the Associated Artists ' met with encouragement
similar to that which the prior establishment had experienced.'2 It
did not however last more than five years. But, during that period,
the exhibitors, of one class or the other, included a few artists of con-
siderable note, and some who afterwards became members of the
Water-Colour Society.
Meanwhile the old Society, though moving from place to place,
was in other respects making satisfactory progress. The number of
admissions on payment in 1808 was one less than 19,000, and the
profit divided more than 445/. At the anniversary meeting of the
3Oth of November, Turner and Atkinson were made full Members ;
and, on the resignation of Glover, Reinagle was elected President for
the ensuing year.
Four drawings in 1 808 were the last which the Society received
1 Both these marine painters lived to a great age. Owen died in December 1857, in his
ninetieth year, having long ceased to practise his art (Redgrave's Dictionary] ; and Schetky
lived till his ninety-sixth year, dying in 1874 (see Ninety Years of Work and Play, a Life t
J. C. Schetky, by his daughter).
* Rfitrocosm of London, ii.
232 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
from the hand of WILLIAM DELAMOTTE. He had contributed in
all only eleven, and been but three years an Associate, never rising
to the rank of Member. His subjects, after the first, were views on
or near the Thames at Marlow &c., with two or three drawings from
his Paris sketches in 1802. He continued his practice as landscape
artist and teacher of drawing for many years after. On the reopening
of the Continent to English travellers he was able to replenish his
portfolio with foreign subjects. Some views in Belgium dated 1819
are among his drawings at South Kensington. Graves finds seventy-
three works by him recorded in the catalogues of the Royal Academy,
British Institution, and Suffolk Street exhibitions, between 1793 and
1850.
A drawing of 'Christ Church Oxford, from Hinksey Meadows'
(20^ x 29^ in.), on wire-wove paper, in the South Kensington Museum,
justifies the description given by Redgrave1 of the artist's early works
as being ' in the manner of Girtin." ' Later,' adds the same writer, ' his
landscapes were chiefly drawn with the pen and tinted, and were
peculiar in style.' He lived to old age, dying on the I3th of
February, 1863, at St. Giles's, near Oxford.
The following prints in The Beauties of England and Wales are
from Delamotte's drawings: 'Oxford, from Ferry Hinksey,' 1804;
' View in Dovedale,' 1805 ; ' Tetbury ' (from a sketch by Prout), 1807 ;
' Matlock Bath,' 1809. He published Thirty Etchings of Rural
Subjects in 1816. Illustrations of Virginia Water, lithographed by
W. Gauci, impl. 4to, 1828; and Original Views of Oxford, coloured
lithographs, impl. folio, 1843, bear the name of ' W. A. Delamotte.'
There are other artists of the same surname. A brother, who
signed himself ' George O. de la Motte,' was also a landscape
painter ; and a son, Philip Henry Delamotte, practised as a photo-
grapher as well as a draftsman, and published many views, and
some technical treatises. The latter died at Bromley in Kent on
the 24th of February, 1889. There are moreover some works on
ornament by F. or F. G. Delamotte, probably of the same family.
1 Dictionary of the English School,
CH. in 233
CHAPTER III
AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809 to
At Wigley's Rooms— Exhibition of 1809 -Testimonials— Changes to 1812— Shelley dies —
Final biography — Death of Paul Sandby — Final biographies of retiring members — W. H.
Pyne — Heaphy — Biographies of new Members and Associates — Thomas Uivins — William
Payne — Edmund Dorrett— Charles Wild — Frederick Nash — Peter De tVint — Copley
Fielding— William Westall.
THE Society enjoyed no rest, however, in their new quarters. They
were unable to obtain the rooms from Mr. Oakley for the ensuing
season, and being again cast adrift, they finally came ashore in Spring
Gardens at the historic site of many an old exhibition ; where the
Incorporated Society of Artists had held their shows for a long series
of years ; where Girtin had spread his view of London ; and where,
more recently, under the name of ' Wigley's Rooms,' a variety of mis-
cellaneous sights had been offered to view. These rooms were in the
last house on the right hand, adjoining the iron gateway from Spring
Gardens into the Mall, there being then no building beyond, on the
site now occupied by the offices of the London County Council. From
this Mr. Wigley they hired the gallery, on a lease, at zoo/, for three
months in each of the next fourteen years ; and from 1809 to 1820
the exhibitions which form the main subject of this chronicle were
held, as the catalogues have it, ' at the Great Rooms, Spring Gardens.'
Exhibition galleries were usually called ' great rooms ' in those days.
That at Spring Gardens was in size 58 by 44 feet.
The Exhibition of 1809 was the most successful of any which the
Society had yet held. The number of drawings amounted to 341 ;
and a surplus of 626!. was divided among the members, whose feel-
ings of satisfaction with the state of things and with one another
found vent in testimonials of a substantial kind. The Secretary and
Treasurer had already been voted an annual So/, each out of the
profits ; in addition to which, a presentation of plate of the value of
100 guineas was made by general subscription to Robert Hills, ' as a
token of respect and gratitude for his unremitting services since the
234 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
establishment of the Society in 1804." Hills, however, gracefully
declining to accept both honoraria at the same time, the amount of
his 5O/. salary was, at his suggestion, employed in providing a similar
testimonial to R. R. Reinagle, the treasurer. Both presentations
took place at the anniversary meeting in November.
Within the period now commencing, although the local habitation
remained the same, important changes were to take place in the con-
stitution of the Society, as well as in the group of artists of which it
was composed. Until 1812, an epoch to be borne in mind, when an
absolute revolution took place which will presently be described,
these changes were chiefly of the latter kind. In the course of the
four years 1809 to 1812 the following fresh dozen of artists joined
the Society as Associates : —
Thomas Uwins \
William Payne
„, ., Y . elected 15 Feb. 1809
Edmund Dorrell
Charles Wild
Frederick Nash . . . . \
Peter De Wint . . . • } • » 22 Jan. 1810
Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding I
William Westall „ iijune, 1810
William Scott ,,30 Nov. 1810
David Cox \
Luke Clennellf . ,' . . . „ 8 June, 1812
C. Barber )
On 12 June, 1809, Stevens and Dorrell; on n June, 1810, Nash
and Uwins; on 10 June, 1811, De Wint and Westall; and 8 June,
1812, Wild and Pugin, were taken from the list of Associates and
made into full Members ; the limit of number being, on the 2gth of
November, 1810, extended from twenty-four to thirty, though
in point of fact it never exceeded twenty-five. In the Presidential
chair — which had been filled from Nov. 1804 to March 1 806 by Gilpin,
from that time till Nov. 1807 by Wells, and then till Nov. 1808 by
Glover — Reinagle sat from Nov. 1808 to the end of the term. The
post of Treasurer was held by Shelley from Nov. 1804 to March
1 807 ; by Reinagle from that time to Nov. 1 808 ; and by Rigaud to the
end of the term. During the whole period the duties of Secretary
were performed by Hills.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 235
Besides the expulsion of Nattes, the Society had, on the other
hand, been weakened in numbers by several desertions, and by one
death. The catalogue of 1808 is the last which contains the name
of SAMUEL SHELLEY. Redgrave tells us that he died at his house
in George Street on the 22nd of December, 1808, at the age of fifty-
eight.1 He had continued to adorn the walls of the galleries in Pall
Mall and Bond Street with ideal studies and pleasing fancies inspired
by Tasso and other poets, and in this last year again placed some
professed portraits among the drawings he exhibited, notwithstanding
their exclusion from a share of profits. But his works had no place
in the series of exhibitions at Spring Gardens. His total number of
drawings in the Society's gallery amounted to sixty-three. Shelley
made some designs for book illustrations, and there are prints after
him by Bartolozzi, Caroline Watson, Nattes, Collier, Heath, Engle-
heart, Sherwin, Burke, and Knight. It is stated that of some of his
works he was his own engraver. A pencil sketch by him of himself
and his sister, purchased at Sotheby and Co.'s in November 1884, is
in the writer's possession.
Another noted life came to an end in the first year of the Spring
Gardens exhibition. Old Paul Sandby was gathered to his fathers
at the age of eighty-three in the late autumn of 1809. With him
died out the prior generation of the water-colour school of which he
had been in many respects the father. He had now survived his
brethren and many of his artist progeny, and had even in his own
practice somewhat outlived the method of art more peculiarly his
own. The tree drawings he made in Windsor Park when more than
seventy had chiefly been executed in distemper. He expired peace-
fully, with faculties unimpaired, at his house in St. George's Row.
The place where his body rests (on the eastern side of the cemetery
behind, close to the path) is marked by a flat stone slab, plainly sup-
ported by a few rows of bricks, and inscribed in very large letters
with the simple words —
PAUL SANDBY, R.A.
OBIIT NOVEMBER
7™ 1809.
1 Dictionary of English School. But the facts, first that Nagler gives the date 1810, and
secondly, that a certain ' Dowager Lady Shelley ' died, according to the Annual Register
(which docs not mention Samuel), on this 22 Dec. 1808, combine to raise a suspicion of error.
236 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
Sandby's death occurred just seven years, less two days, after that of
his bright young neighbour, Thomas Girtin.
The name of another of its founders passes out of the Society's
records during the period of removal from Bond Street to Spring
Gardens.1 On the nth of January, 1809, WILLIAM HENRY PYNE,
the zealous promoter of its formation, chose to exemplify the alleged
fickleness of his disposition by resigning his membership, and de-
voting himself to pursuits still connected with art, but in which the
work of the pen encroached on, and gradually superseded, that of
the pencil. His contributions to the annual show, fifty-four in all,
though ably executed, had been of minor attraction. Latterly,
cottages are his favourite subjects. He had not, however, been idle
in work for the press, and a series of books of small figures, chiefly
designed for the use of students and landscape draftsmen, whereof
the Microcosm, already mentioned, was the first, are the productions
on which the reputation of his pencil chiefly rests. The following
works were afterwards published by him in succession, viz. — ' The
Costume of Great Britain, designed engraved and written by W. H.
Pyne,' imp. 4to, Miller, Albemarle Street, 1808. It contains sixty
coloured aquatints, a single figure or group only on each plate, the
dresses being those of various degrees, from a dustman to a peer of
the realm. It is the seventh volume of a series of works on costume,
the others being of China, Turkey, Russia, and Austria. — ' W. H. Pyne
on Rustic Figures in Imitation of Chalk,' 4to, Ackermann. In the
preface the author draws a contrast between the study of drawing
the ' classic or elegant ' and the ' rustic ' figure, the former being
characterized by flowing lines and studied folds of drapery con-
forming to the limbs, the latter demanding more abrupt lines, and
the draperies, of coarser stuff, giving no indication of the wearer's
shape. And he announces that, ' to facilitate the study of rustic
figures,' he ' has modelled a number of characters selected from the
English peasantry, on a scale of 8 inches in height, from which
plaster casts are taken, for the purpose of assisting young persons in
acquiring the art of grouping, and to improve them in the study of light
and shadow.' These were to be had at Ackermann's, the publisher.
The thirty-six plates in this work appear to be soft-ground etchings,
1 On one subsequent occasion, namely in 1815, Pyne contributed two works to the Spring
Gardens gallery, but not as a member of the Society.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812
237
helped with the roulette, chiefly single figures for drawing copies, in
the 'slight manner' recommended. They are dated 1813, though
the title-page (of one edition at least) has the date 1817. — ' Etchings
of Rustic Figures for the Embellishment of Landscape. By W. H. Pyne,
Author of the " Microcosm of Arts," &c.,' imp. 8vo, M. A. Nattali,
23 Bedford Street, Covent Garden. This work contains sixty plates
of figures and groups, boats, carts, &c., pure hard-ground etchings.
They are dated 1814 and 1815. An edition was published in
1819.
As a practical artist he did little more, though he continued to
labour in the cause of art till a late period of his life as a writer
and conductor of works for the press. In 1819 was also published
an elaborate work in three royal quarto volumes : ' The History of the
Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St. James's Palace, Carlton
House, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, Buckingham House,
and Frogmore." It was illustrated by one hundred coloured aquatints,
to which Pyne supplied the letterpress, and a strong group of
members of the Water-Colour Society1 provided the illustrations.
Though the author was in this case his own publisher, the book
belongs to the same group as a series of works which emanated from
Ackermann's firm during the first quarter of the century, and in the
projection whereof Pyne is said to have borne a considerable share.2
They will be referred to more fully by-and-by. The following letter
to his friend Jerdan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, referring to
the progress of this work, is characteristic of the writer : ' My dear
Sir, — 1 have sent some account of Windsor, which I request you to
read over carefully. I have marked the quotations all the way.
Please make what alterations you may think necessary in the pro-
logue, which is vastly modest. I had written something for Hampton
Court, but determined yesterday afternoon to begin with the beginning.
So all that I had gotten for the Literary Gazette will do for another
occasion. I much wish to see you, but am so incessantly engaged,
being on the very point of finishing my work, that I must postpone
that pleasure for two or three days. I have written out some sheets
of my CROOKED TELESCOPE, which I am Jack ass enough to
1 Wild, Westall, Pugin, Mackenzie, Nash, and Stephanoff, were among the draftsmen
employed.
2 There is a plate after \V. II. Pyne in Ackermann's History of the University of Cam-
bridge, 1815.
238 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
think very witty and very pithy and very original, and, in short, what
you cannot attack in INK POT MALICE.
' Yours very faithfully,
' W. H. PYNE.
'July 22, 1819.
' In great great great haste.
'J. JERDAN, Esq., Upper Queen's Buildings, Brompton.'
This particular work turned out to be a disastrous speculation,
and involved him in difficulties which he was never able to overcome.1
He afterwards employed his pen chiefly as a journalist and critical
writer on art. As a gossiping historian of the earlier days of the
British school, he handed down to later generations, though in a
desultory fashion, a valuable record, derived from the experience of
his youth and the current hearsay of his older companions. Adopt-
ing the nom deplume ' Ephraim Hardcastle' (citizen and drysalter),
he wrote a series of papers in the Literary Gazette, which were after-
wards collected into two octavo volumes, and published by Longman
and Co., in 1823, under the title Wine and Walnuts. Then came
the ' Somerset House Gazette ; Weekly Miscellany of Fine Arts,
Antiquities, and Literary Chit-chat,' the first number of which was
dated II October, 1823. In it was absorbed in the following February
an existing paper called the 'Literary Museum,' and it came out
weekly under a joint title until No. 52, dated 2nd October, 1824.
A continuation was announced, but is not known to have been ever
issued, and the year's work now fills the two small-quarto volumes
which there has been such frequent occasion to quote in these pages
It was published by William Wetton in Fleet Street, opposite St.
Dunstan's Church. Pyne, who edited and probably wrote most of
the work, already announces himself in the first number as one of
the 'virtuosi greybeards.' He was then fifty-four, and he lived
twenty years longer, contributing to other publications which followed,
namely, Arnold's 'Library of the Fine Arts' and 'Magazine of the
Fine Arts' and ' Fraser's Magazine!'1 In 1825 he published his
last entire book, ' The Twenty-ninth of May ; Rare Doings at the
Restoration, by Ephraim Hardcastle,' 2 vols. 8vo.
1 He had announced a second series, to be called ' Interior Views of the most magnificent
Seats of the Nobility and Gentry throughout Great Britain.' See Elmes's Annals of the
Fine Arts (1816).
• ' The Greater and Lesser Stars of Old Pall Mall ' is the title of his last paper in Fraser.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1811 239
Sad to relate, Pyne's ' latter days ' were, as his friend John Britton
expressed it, ' clouded by misfortune.' l
The following letter to ' W. Jerdan Esq., Grove House, Brompton,'
bearing the postmark of /th May, 1828, was written from the
King's Bench prison, and speaks for itself: ' My dear Sir, — Our friend
Mr. Hunt has written to me thus : " Funds are ready for your relief,
and if Forty pounds will extricate you that sum can be had instanter."
He further says, " I am to say how and when the issues are to be
made " etc. I have written to say that a sum not exceeding five
pounds would be immediately most useful, as I have demands upon
me here, and the residue will be no less beneficial at home, as I left
Mrs. Pyne destitute of means. I have some employment which will,
I believe, secure me three pounds per week, so that I trust two
pounds weekly from you, my worthy banker, will supply the wants of
myself and family. This place, with the most rigid economy, is yet
expensive. Fortunately I have obtained a room to myself, in which
I am occupied in painting and drawing. Had I not found a
Samaritan here, in Mr. Hopwood, late a sheriff's officer, I know not
what I should have done. He kindly advanced me the needful, and I
have repaid him in part. I shall hope to have occasion therefore to
draw upon the said fund of 4O/. only two pounds weekly. This gift,
thus spontaneously bestowed through your friendly zeal, I receive
with thanks indeed ! I feel proud in thus obtaining it, as it leads me
to think that in the extremity of my misfortune I have not lost the
esteem of good men, a blessing only to be duly estimated by one
circumstanced like myself. The money thus obtained will enable
me to go through the necessary ordeal to extricate me. I did, on the
receipt of Mr. Hunt's letter, employ my attorney to give notice of my
taking the benefit of the Insolvent Act, and my notice is signed and
delivered. I trust that I shall be liberated within seven weeks. My
attorney has engaged, and will give it to you and Mr. Hunt in
writing, to do the whole within fifteen pounds. He thinks that the
sum will not exceed twelve. So that I hope there will remain some-
thing at the period of my liberation. Once more then, my dear
Jerdan, I thank you, and remain, as ever, Your obliged and faithful
servant,
'W. H. PYNE.
A graphic picture of poor Pyne's condition some half-dozen years
' Britton's Autobiography, Part II. p. 183.
240 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
later, and of his brave struggling against evil fortune, is given in the
following long epistle addressed to worthy John Britton at ' Burton
Street (or Place), Burton Crescent,' and dated 'October 30, 1835.'
The writer is again in the debtors' prison, though he gives as his
address ' 32 Dudley Grove, Paddington.' ' Dear Sir, — I take the
liberty to write to you again, in conformity with that I said in my
last, and feel assured you will read what I shall pen, with your
accustomed kindness. I write without reserve, which I venture to
think will be more agreeable to you, than if I were to use compli-
ments and flattery, and therefore beg to observe that it would not
surprise me if you were to entertain an opinion that a man of talent
with suitable industry and economy might contrive in such an
enlightened age as the present to obtain a living, or at least avoid
getting into debt. You indeed, and I say it in honest sincerity, are
amongst those who might be forgiven for holding such an opinion,
because it must be pretty generally known that you have practised
these moral virtues, or your condition would not be so favourable as
you have yourself expressed it to be — I quote from your own con-
fessions, on reading that sketch of your life which you kindly
presented to me.
' I have been both industrious and frugal, and yet at my advanced
period of life I have nothing left of that private fortune which ought
perhaps, with more foresight than I ever possessed, to have maintained
me ; but I entered into speculations which were not sufficiently con-
sidered, and the result has been only the experience of varied misfor-
tune. I have indeed exerted my capacity to avert these evils, and
have as worthy a wife, and two daughters, in every domestic respect,
as ever man was blessed with, and yet we cannot, or at least have not
prospered. I trouble you with these statements, lest your own
honourable career should lead you to misgivings as to my prudence
in the management of the means I have possessed. But should you
so have thought, permit me to say, in behalf of myself and family,
that we have mixed as little in the gaieties of life as though we were
of the persuasion of the Quakers. My daughters, though accom-
plished women, were never at a public ball ; we have never been at any
watering-place, nor at any other [sic], excepting two or three concerts.
Never together at any play-house. Have faith in me, moreover,
though I should desire it not to be made generally known, that from
the time of my reverses, namely, the failure of my work on the
en. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 241
Palaces, I have not purchased one single bottle of wine — nor owed for
one directly or indirectly. I could not afford to drink wine, and I
would not go into debt for such a luxury. More than this, not one
shilling has been owing by my wife or daughters for dress of any sort
or kind ; all my expenses have been for the necessaries of life in
supporting one daughter for many years afflicted with the tic dolour eux,
and another, a widow, and her son (a youth now dead), and the mother
engaged with the partners in his late concern in a chancery suit, not
having received a shilling from the concern from the time of his
death, now more than twelve years. This daughter has contributed
to our means by going out as a governess, and the house which I
hold on lease at Dudley Grove, the property of a worthy friend, was
taken under the hope of my two daughters being enabled to establish
a day school for young ladies, and we hope, and indeed expect it will
succeed. Now my Dear Sir, the drift of these explanations is, to
endeavour to shew to you the rectitude of our little family compact,
as the best, and only warrantry I can bring before you, for again
asking you to use your kind offices in my behalf, knowing, or hearing
at least that there is to be a meeting of the worthy gentlemen who
compose the Committee of the Benevolent Literary Fund Society,
when I venture to solicit a renewal of your benevolent exertions in
my behalf.
' I have lost too much time of late in preparing two works.
Indeed I have bestowed nearly fourteen months upon them ; the one
a plan for teaching the polite arts and sciences by the aid of wood-
cuts— the other, an illustration of the Holy Bible. I have submitted
each to Messrs. Longman and to others, who have expressed their
approval of their originality but decline engaging to take them —
entirely in consequence of the probable out-lay for so extensive a
number of blocks. Thus I have been diligent as it were, in doing of
nothing. I hope, however, that the work which I am now upon — I
mean the graphic Wine and Walnuts, will be successful ; all without
exception who I have made acquainted with the plan, urge me to pro-
ceed, upon their opinion that it will meet with very extensive support.
It has pleased God to bless me with health, and as I believe I said
before, my mental en[ergies] are not at all diminished, and I hope very
soon to commence upon the etching of two plates as specimens. I
shall adopt your advice, and publish them as facsimiles three plates
for one guinea, and the twelve celebrated clubs to make a volume,
R
242 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
with letter-press historically descriptive of each. My only anxiety is
to procure some little funds to enable me to begin ; and I have the
courage to believe that, once set a going, I shall obtain a good sub-
scription. The worst of my tale is yet untold — for I am at this
moment a prisoner in the King's Bench ; although to alleviate my
sorrow I have a room to myself and, by the goodness of the Marshal,
such facilities, as will enable me to proceed with my studies undis-
turbed. I remain, Dear Sir, your obliged friend and servant,
•W. H. PYNE.
'To J. Britton, Esq.'
These sanguine schemes, it need hardly be said, came to naught ;
and even the blessing of health, which he so piously acknowledged,
was taken from him ; for it is recorded to have been ' after a long and
depressing illness ' l that he died at Paddington, aged seventy-four, on
the very anniversary that he had celebrated in his last book, ' the
29th of May,' 1843.
A subscription had been raised for his benefit, to which Britton
contributed ; and in his last year (June 1842) a sum of 2O/. was
voted for his relief by the Water-Colour Society, on his daughter's
representation that he was 'in a state of old age, incapacity, and
extreme distress.1
Another member who deserted the Society was THOMAS HEAPHY.
He resigned just at the end of the above-mentioned term, namely, on
the loth of February, 1812, after having exhibited from five to thir-
teen works yearly since his election, making forty in all. They had
formed a distinct feature in the exhibitions, and their value stood
high in the market.
' We have a distinct recollection,' says Pyne,2 ' of the favourable
impression which the works of this artist wrought upon the admirers
of water-colour paintings.3 . . . For three or four successive seasons,
the high prices which were paid for his novel designs were sufficient
proofs of public approbation.' This, however, he regards as ' not
entirely complimentary to public taste ; for,' says he, ' many of the
1 Redgrave's Dictionary of the English School.
* Somerset House Gazette, i. 194.
' The writer includes the ' first opening of the exhibition in Brook Street.' But here his
memory is at fault. Heaphy did not join the Society until they had left their first quarters
for Pall Mall.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 243
compositions of his ingenious hand represented scenes in low life
which, although depicted with great observance of character and
truth of expression, yet, being destitute of that moral point which
characterizes the works of the incomparable Hogarth, were disgusting
to good feeling and repulsive to delicate sentiment.' But he cites his
water-colour drawings of this period as examples of brilliancy and
harmony of colouring attainable in that medium.1
Heaphy's contempt of ' academic art ' was not reciprocated by its
professors, at least not by President West, who expressed his great
admiration of a ' spirited little composition ' by this artist, called
' Boys disputing over their Day's Sport,' which was exhibited in Bond
Street in 1808; and the encomium being spread about among the
crowd of persons of high rank who were present, his fame was at
once established.2 The next year, 1 809, at Spring Gardens his
drawing of the ' Fish Market ' at Hastings was also highly praised by
West, who said of it to Pyne, ' Sir, the subject is so well treated in
its way, the expression is so complete, and the colouring and harmony
are so pure and so perfect that it leaves one nothing to wish.' 3 This
picture has been considered his chef-tfceuvre, and it was bought by
Mr. Wheeler of Gloucester Place for four or five hundred guineas.
The titles of many of his other works, such as ' Robbing a Market
Girl,' and its companion, ' Young Gamblers,' 1807 ; ' Disappointment,
or the Lease refused,' ' The Poacher alarmed,' ' Chiding the Favourite,'
'The Lout's Reward,' 1808 ;' Family Doctress,' 1809 ;' The Proposal/
' The Mother's Prayer,' 1810 ; ' Scene round a Fish Tub, Symptoms of
a Broomstick Wedding,' 'The Happy Meeting,' 1811; and others,
seem to aim at a kind of popularity which one is not apt to associate
with the highest appreciation of art. One of the above, the ' Family
Doctres?,' is possibly the drawing, now at South Kensington, con-
fessedly rechristened ' The Wounded Leg.'
After his success with the ' Hastings Fish Market,' the sale of
Heaphy's works for some reason declined, and his pictures remained
on his hands. In 1813 he had an exhibition of them at the old
Academy Rooms, where the Society had been located in the first
year of his Associateship. The result does not seem to have been
such as to encourage the composition of more subject-pieces, for he
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 114. 2 Ibid. p. 194.
1 Ibid. ' Poor West used to overwhelm young men with flattery, and often spoil them."
Memoir of Uwins, ii. 114.
K 2
244 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
now turned his attention again more exclusively to portrait-painting,
and sought a more promising field of operations. After leaving the
Society, he accompanied the British army during the war in the
Peninsula, in order to portray the chief officers engaged therein. He
was with the troops during most of the operations till the battle of
Toulouse, and at the close of the war returned to England and
painted a large water-colour picture of the Duke of Wellington and
his staff, the engraving from which is well known. In February
1821, he began an issue in numbers, each containing six heads in
black and white chalk, of ' Studies from Nature of the British
Character, consisting of soldiers who have fought under the Duke of
Wellington, sailors, and rustics.' '
He afterwards entered into some building speculations in the then
almost uninhabited district of St. John's Wood, and may be said for
some years to have nearly relinquished painting. The result was
what might have been expected. On resuming the brush, while yet
in the prime of life, he exclaimed with grief, ' My power has gone
from me.' But he did not abandon art. He was among the
originators of the Society of British Artists, was their first president
in 1823, and exhibited fourteen works at their gallery in Suffolk Street.
In 1831 he joined the 'New Society of Painters in Water-Colours'
(now the Royal Institute), and in November 1835 departed this life.
In his later time he evinced a higher appreciation of the old masters
than he had professed in his youth, by the earnestness and avidity
with which he made copies of their works during a visit he then paid
to Italy.2
A son of his, T. F. Heaphy, practised art as an original painter
and as a picture restorer, and was the author of several books.3
Thus much for the departed. Among the artists who joined the
Society in the latter part of its first period, were one or two whose
names are ordinarily used to indicate its golden era. Cox and De Whit,
and Copley Fielding, were indeed made Associates before the close of
the period, and De Wint was for one year a full Member. But Cox
came too late to have any place in this series of exhibitions, and
1 Ackermann's Repository, xi. 128.
2 In Ackermann's Repository for February 1821 is announced 'Studies of Character and
Expression from the Old Masters,' by Heaphy.
3 There is an account of him and them in Redgrave's Dictionary (and edit.), and in
the Athenceum, 13 August, 1881 ; see also Notes and Que,ie$, 6th series, iv. 508.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 245
De Wint and Fielding appear only in three out of four of those held at
Spring Gardens during the period in question. The great majority of
the Associates elected, as above mentioned, from 1809 to 1812 belong,
as before, to the department of landscape, two only being figure-
painters, and one of these, Clennell, elected (like Cox) too late to
exhibit at all. But the names of De Wint and Cox, and Clennell also,
were already before the public, for they had all been exhibiting with
success in the rival society of the ' Associated Artists."
The new figure-painter who contributed to our gallery was
THOMAS UwiNS, who nearly thirty years after became a Royal
Academician. When he began to exhibit with the Water-Colour
Society, in 1809, he was a man of twenty-seven, known as a graceful
designer, at this time chiefly employed (by J. Walker of Paternoster
Row, and others) in making designs for book-illustration,1 of the
school that acknowledged the leadership of Stothard ; whom he
followed without imitating, either in style or treatment. He drew
the very pretty faces2 and figures in the coloured fashion-plates of
Ackermann's Repository, in which periodical he moreover wrote critical
articles. He also copied pictures for engravers,3 a practice in which
many of our best painters in water-colours found profitable employ-
ment at a time when line engraving was still held in general esteem
as a living art.
Thomas Uwins was the fourth and youngest child of a clerk in
the Bank of England, who bore the same name, and lived at Hermes
Hill, Pentonville ; where this boy, one of three, was born on the 24th
of February, 1782. His father's calling, and the classic fitness in the
appellation of his own birthplace, may lead one to assume that he
too would have been dedicated to the shrine of commerce, had not a
capacity for art been found within him on a timely occasion. This
discovery was made one day by an Italian refugee, who taught his
sister drawing. Miss Uwins was being educated for a teacher of
1 There is an edition of the works of 'Peter Pindar' in 4 vols. I2mo, 1809, with
vignettes by Uwins.
2 Ackermann, in his German English, called them Uwins's ' britty vaces,' and paid for
the tinted drawings at the rate of half a crown apiece. The artist had not only to draw but
collect the dresses he depicted. (Memoir of Uwins, by his widow, i. 23, 24, 46.)
3 In or about 1810, he copied in Indian ink, for Charles Warren, Barry's big painting of
the ' Grecian Harvest Home ' at the Society of Arts, thereby relieving Wilkie, who had
undertaken the work, but left it for his own natural domain of art. He also copied in
water-colours Hilton's ' Europa ' in Sir John Leicester's gallery. (Ibid. p. 25.)
246 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
young ladies, and flower-painting being considered the most profit-
able branch for her to study with that object, some ' copies ' of
another kind which the master had with him when he came to give
her a lesson, chanced to fall under her brother's eye. He ' began to
look over them, borrowed a pencil, and very quietly set himself to
copy the limbs and faces of figures.' The drawing- master, on seeing
what the boy had done, was ' greatly surprised,' and told his mother
that ' this child ought to have the best instruction, and would most
assuredly excel in art.' Tom Uwins was then about nine, and had to
be given a general education as well. So he was sent, with his
brothers, for six years to Mr. Crole's academy in Queen's Head Lane,
Islington. But his mother, who seems (after the nature of artists'
mothers) to have been more pleased than his father with the above
prophecy, took care to get him some instruction in drawing at the
same time, not only in the class there, but from a master on half-
holidays. The teacher so employed was honest enough to declare,
after six months, that he could teach him nothing more, and would
not rob his parents by pretending to do so.
In 1797, when he was fifteen, Uwins was bound apprentice, at a
premium of 100 guineas, to an engraver, one Benjamin Smith, living
in Judd Place,1 New Road. Smith, though himself possessed of no
great talent, had some good engravers as pupils. Among them were
William Holl and Henry Meyer, the former of whom was, in Uwins's
time, employed as an assistant, but was in fact the chief instructor.
There was also an occasional assistant, called R. Syer, from whom
Uwins declared that he ' learned more of art than from any other
person.' Smith was then doing work, or getting it done, for Alder-
man Boydell, and there is a plate, in the Shakspere series, of ' Richard
surrendering his Crown to Bolingbroke,' after Mather Brown, which
(having been begun by a friend and fellow-pupil, R. C. Roffe) was
finished by Uwins. But he disliked this kind of work, and, worry-
ing himself over it into an attack of jaundice, had to be released
after one year's servitude; when he exchanged the burin for the
brush.
While at Smith's, he had diligently practised his drawing after the
daily ten hours of drudgery there were over, and would even employ
his pencil at tea-time in sketching the cups and saucers. It is
possible that now, when enabled to devote himself to congenial
1 The number was 21, afterwards changed to 74.
CH. Ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 247
branches of art, he became one of Simpson's pupils at the school
in Finsbury, where Heaphy received instruction.1 Like his alleged
fellow-pupil, he too became afterwards (in 1798) a student at the
Royal Academy. And now again the careers of the two artists were
to run parallel for a short period in the annals of the Water-Colour
Society, where Heaphy was Uwins's proposer as an Associate.
While at the. Academy, Uwins attended Sir Charles Bell's ana-
tomical class, and his drawings of the muscles were much praised
for their truthfulness by that eminent surgeon, himself an excellent
artist. He had begun also to try his hand at likenesses in water-
colours when he was quite a boy, and is said to have ' supported
himself by miniature portraits and by teaching before he was
twenty.' But his chief delight was found in original design.
During the four years 1809-1812, Uwins exhibited at the Water-
Colour Society forty-three separate drawings (seven of them being
small ones, grouped together, more than one in a frame). Eight, in
1 8 1 1, represented scenes from Shakspere. Others were illustrations of
Fielding, Sterne, &c. Rural industries of his time and country, hop
and fruit pickers, plaiters, gleaners, and the like, supplied him with
picturesque figure studies and groups, that made up nearly all the
rest of his contributions. In treating subjects of the latter class he
showed a refinement which in some measure associates his work with,
but does not make it resemble, that of Cristall, who was beginning to
cultivate a like field, in a spirit more severely classical.
The name of one of the remaining landscape painters, WILLIAM
PAYNE, recalls an earlier age of the present history. He is known
to the reader as one of the improvers of water-colour drawing, who
helped to adapt it to a wider range of landscape than had come
within the scope of the old topographers, and as a very fashionable
teacher of showy ways of handling the brush, and contrasting bright
colours with the tempering aid of his favourite 'grey.' But his
practice latterly had taken a downward course. Like many a pro-
mising painter, having once secured his standing in the profession,
he seems to have attained the summit of his ambition. He had
ceased to be a student, and become a professor with a settled style of
painting, to which nature had thenceforth to conform. Content to
repeat himself, he had allowed his art to degenerate, as it always
' See supra, p. 218, n. 2.
248 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
does in such a case. His painting, which had depended for some
of its attraction upon manual dexterity and tricks of the brush,
became absolute mannerism. He was surpassed by better artists,
and forgotten before he died.
During the four years of his short connexion with the Water-
Colour Society, he remained an Associate only From 1809 to 1811
he had five drawings each year, and in 1812 he had two, making
seventeen in all. They were nearly all views in Devon and Cornwall,
with three or four in Wales. Often, like Glover, he specifies the time
of day or the weather, three being 'moonlights.' One was a pro-
fessed ' composition,' and another represented ' Banditti.' The South
Kensington Gallery possesses eight of his drawings.1
According to Graves, Payne exhibited, between 1776 and 1830,
ninety-one works : seventeen at the Society of Artists, twenty-two
at th^ Royal Academy, fifty at the British Institution, and two at
Suffolk Street. The dates of his birth and death have not been
ascertained.2
EDMUND DORRELL was another of the many good artists who
have been induced by a natural longing to take up the brush in pre-
ference to the occupations designed for them by the guardians of their
youth. He was brought up by an uncle, who intended to make him
a doctor, having himself a good medical practice at Warwick, where
Dorrell was born in 1778 ; but helped him to be a painter when he
discovered his bent. Dorrell had begun to exhibit at the Royal
Academy in 1807. He sent thirty-nine drawings to the Water-
Colour Society's four exhibitions (1809 to 1812) at Spring Gardens;
mostly picturesque landscape subjects, without special topographic
interest. Cottages and trees and river-banks in the home counties
supplied most of his material. With them there were one or two
views in Monmouthshire, and sometimes studies of cottage children.
His drawings are very pleasing, but, not being numerous, are not often
seen. He treated his subjects with an artistic eye and some poetic
feeling, endowing well-balanced compositions with deep and warm
tones of colour.
1 There is a drawing by Payne at the British Museum, on absorbent paper, with dark
trees, powerful in colour.
2 Some speculations as to the identity or connexion of W. Payne (who exhibited at R.A.
1821-1822), W. R. Payne, jun., and Matthew Payne of Coventry, are in Notes and Queries,
6th series, i. 522, ii. 277.
CH. ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 249
CHARLES WILD was born in London in 1781, the second son in
a large family,1 and was therefore about twenty-eight when he joined
the Society as an Associate. He had in his earlier youth been articled
to Turner's perspective-master, Thomas Malton, and from the first
had devoted himself to architectural subjects, using his pen and pencil
with the geometrical rigour of a professed architect, and with the
same neatness of detail. This minute truthfulness was retained when,
becoming more of a painter, he gave to such representations the
superadded charm of pictorial treatment, with refined and delicately
harmonized colour. In 1803 he began to exhibit his drawings at the
Royal Academy, with two views at Christ Church, Oxford, and from
that year to 1810 had nine drawings there; those of 1805 being of
Westminster Abbey, and those of 1808 of York Cathedral. From
1809 to 1812, he brought five drawings a year to the Society's collec-
tion. They were nearly all views of English cathedrals, of which he
had, some years before, commenced the production of a long series of
engraved illustrations, that continued to be issued for many years.
Those of Canterbury, York, Chester, and Lichfield were published
between 1807 and 1813. Some of the titles of Wild's drawings are
accompanied by illustrative verses, which indicate a poetic treatment.
His ' Canterbury ' has its pilgrims, and one drawing, of 1812, 'The
Trial of Constance de Beverley,' from the second canto of Marmion,
seems even to have belonged to the class of 'subject' pictures.
FREDERICK NASH, another architectural draftsman of great
eminence, was in his line a most accomplished painter, and con-
tributed largely in after years to the Society's exhibitions. He joined
it, as above recorded, a year after the accession of Wild, whose junior
he was by about the same space of time. He was already in good
practice. His merits as a draftsman had not only gained him employ-
ment by eminent architects of the day (Sir Robert Smirke among
them, from whose designs he made drawings), but were known to the
public by divers engraved works.
There is some danger of confusion between three successive
Nashes, of no known kinship, but all connected with architecture
and its graphic illustration. There was John Nash, the builder and
architect already mentioned, Pugin's friend and employer. There
was Frederick Nash, now before us. And there was Joseph Nash,
1 He was nephew, on the mother's side, of Sir Isaac Herd, Garter King-at-Arms.
2SO THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
another, but much younger, member of the Society, who will have to
be dealt with by-and-by. Our present subject, the elder draftsman
of the name, was the son of a respectable builder in Lambeth, and
there first saw the light on the 28th of March, 1782. He was the
youngest child of his mother, separated in age from the rest of her
offspring by an interval of ten years. The latter circumstance, added
to his own engaging nature as a child, made him the pet of the family,
among whom his infantine fancy for decorating all scraps of paper
that came in his way with ships, houses, and trees, was duly recalled
when it became apparent that, tractable on most subjects, he was im-
movable in his choice of a profession. In after life he admitted that
he had not known his own interest. But the world is a gainer by his
want of that knowledge. He thought (and there are precedents in
his favour) that ' to be an artist was greater than to be a king.' So,
rejecting the offer of a rich relative to pay all costs and give him other
advantages if he would only be a lawyer, he clung to his pencil, and
had to be placed with an architectural draftsman. His master was
one Moreton (said to have been of repute at the time), who gave him
a thorough grounding in perspective. Thence he entered the schools
of the Academy in the early days of President West, and at the age
of eighteen exhibited there his first view of Westminster Abbey, the
subject of some of his finest and most important paintings. This
represented the ' North Entrance.'
During the next ten years he drew for the engravers. In
Britton and Brayley's voluminous work, The Beauties of England and
Wales, may be found at least twenty prints after drawings by F.
Nash, bearing dates of publication from 1801 to 1809. In 1805 a
series of aquatint views, exterior and interior, by him, of The Collegiate
Chapel of St. George at Windsor, was published with explanatory
letterpress. When engaged in preparing this work, he was received
by King George the Third with marked kindness and condescension.
' There is,' says Mr. Maurice B. Adams, ' a thoroughness of purpose
in these so-called pre-Puginesque works, not always conspicuous in
our own contemporaneous productions.' ' This series was followed
by Twelve Vie^vs of the Antiquities of London, ' for the illustration
of Lysons, Pennant, &c.,' 4to, 1805-1810. He also exhibited water-
colour drawings at the Royal Academy, and his name is in the first
volume of Britton's Architectural Antiquities, published in 1807, as
1 Paper on Architectural Illustrations, 1877, p. 7.
CH. ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 251
the draftsman of five of the plates (one of the Temple Church and
four of Malmesbury Abbey). To this period also belongs an ' Inside
View of King's College Chapel in Cambridge,' engraved, with date
4 May, 1808, by John Byrne, in Britannia Depicta, Part II.
In 1808 he was an exhibitor with the Associated Artists, and in
j 809 a Member of that Society ; contributing, in these two years,
eight drawings. They included two interiors of Westminster Abbey,
the West Front of St. Paul's, a large drawing of the choir of
Canterbury Cathedral, and several ruins in Wales and the North of
England. In 1810 he became, instead, a contributor to the old
Society, exhibiting his five drawings as an Associate. In 181 1, having
become a Member, he sends twenty-two, followed by nine in 1812.
Some were called 'sketches,' but others were superb and highly
finished drawings. They included subjects from London and the
neighbourhood, Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church and the
Savoy Chapel, St. Albans, Eltham, and Windsor, the cathedrals of
Salisbury and Lincoln, and the Yorkshire abbeys of Fountains and
Kirkstall.
Pyne informs us that one of the drawings exhibited by Nash in
1811, an ' Inside of Westminster Abbey, with Funeral Procession,'
drew forth a special tribute of praise from Benjamin West, another
instance of the lively interest taken by that kindly President of the
Academy in the progress of the water-colour school. He took it as
a text to combat the dictum of an amateur that ' such subjects
demanded little more than a mere mechanical application of the
executive part of painting.' ' It is true,' said West, ' that an accurate
view of this or any other building may be drawn on mechanical
principles, but to describe the scene under the influence of this grand
and pictorial sentiment is as much an affair of mind as to represent
nature under the gorgeous colouring of a Titian.'1 This drawing
was purchased from the artist by Mr. T. T. Wheeler, of the New
Road, a liberal patron of water-colour art, for I55/. A very large
and fine work, 46^ x 35 inches in size, answering to the above
description, was lent by Mr. Henry Carr for exhibition at a conversa-
zione of the Royal Water-Colour Society Art Club in 1886. It was
well preserved, and would fully justify West's encomium. Other
important drawings of the same interior were made by Nash at later
dates, which will be referred to in due course.
1 Somerset House Gazette, ii. 128.
252 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
On the 5th of May, 1807, Nash was appointed architectural drafts-
man to the Society of Antiquaries ; and he was employed in work
for that body for many years.
The year 1810 also introduces to us the distinguished artists
De Wint and Copley Fielding, who were to take leading parts in the
achievements of the Society in the sunny days to come.
PETER DE WiNT, as his name implies, was of Dutch extraction.
His father was a physician, with a Leyden degree, practising at Stone
in Staffordshire. His ancestors were wealthy merchants of Amster-
dam. The penultimate generation had migrated to New York,
whence our artist's father, Henry De Wint, a second son, came back
to Europe for medical instruction, with an allowance of 3OO/. a year
and a comfortable prospect of marrying a cousin, practising the
healing art in America, and being otherwise well provided for. All
this might have happened had not the young man, on attaining his
majority, chosen to fall in love with and marry a lady of Scotch
descent, whose British blood did not compensate, in his parent's eyes,
for her slender fortune. One result of this imprudence was that his
father disowned him, stopped his allowance, and, dying from an accident
soon after, was found to have cut him off with a shilling. Another
was, that he remained in England ; and thus we are able to number
among our most cherished native artists his fourth son, Peter De
Wint, who was born at Stone aforesaid on the 2ist day of January,
1784.
Peter was at first intended for his father's profession, but, evincing
a marked predilection for graphic art, which declared itself in a con-
stant use of the pencil,1 and in lonely rambles after nature, he was
allowed to learn drawing of a local professor, one Rogers of Stafford,
and at the age of eighteen to abandon a study of the healing art, upon
which he had unwillingly entered, and go to London as a resident
pupil of John Raphael Smith.2 It was on the /th of June, 1802, that
the indentures were signed which bound him 'prentice for seven years
1 His after calling as an instructor, too, was foreshadowed in these early days ; for he not
only drew himself, but taught his schoolfellows to do the same. Thus they could boast in
future times of having had ' lessons from De Wint ' (and gratis !).
'l It is conjectured by Mr. Armstrong that John Raphael Smith's brother, Thomas
Correggio Smith, who was a painter of miniatures at Uttoxeter, may have been the
channel through which this connexion was brought about. (See Memoir of Peter De
Wint. )
CH. ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 253
•(phis an extra year's service in lieu of premium), and whereby Smith
engaged to teach him ' the arts and mysteries of engraving and
portrait-painting.' We are already acquainted with the name of
this lively mezzotint engraver, draftsman, and taker of likenesses in
crayons, Morland's gay associate, the publisher for whom Turner and
Girtin coloured prints together when boys. Those days were old
when De Wint came to him for instruction. The acts of that earlier
generation were but traditions of the past in Smith's studio. Poor
Morland's reckless career was virtually ended. That same year 1802
saw him released for a time from his creditors, but utterly broken, to
die miserably, again a captive, after two sad winters more had flown.1
In the same year Girtin passed away, and Turner was enrolled an
Academician. Smith himself was entering his last decade.2 And in
the same year the little partie carrfe in George Street, Hanover
Square, were already discussing the prospects of their art, and laying
the foundations of the Society which our young student was destined
so richly to adorn.
Among the young artists at Raphael Smith's in this later time
was William Hilton, afterwards R.A., and distinguished among the
history painters for his high aims in art. We all know his ' Find-
ing the Body of Harold,' in the National collection. He was junior
to De Wint by more than two years, but had begun his studies earlier,
having become a pupil of Smith's in 1800. He bsgan to exhibit at
the Academy in 1803. The fields of art afterwards cultivated by
Hilton and De Wint were about as widely separate as they could well
be ; but their amiable natures had much in common, and, brought
together thus, they struck up a mutual friendship which united them
very closely ever after. While at Smith's they shewed a similarity
in taste, or rather in distaste, in their preference of the mystery of
painting to that of engraving, and the master had the good sense to
humour their natural predilection. Being an ardent fisherman, he
used to take the two cronies out with him and let them sketch while
he indulged in his sport. This was at any rate the very thing to suit
De Wint. But his attachment to Hilton on one occasion brought
about less amicable relations between master and pupil. Hilton took
upon himself to play truant and run away home, and De Wint, to
whom he had confided his intention, declining to betray him by
1 George Morland died 29 October, 1804, aged forty-one.
2 John Raphael Smith died 2 March, 1812, in his sixtieth year.
254 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
declaring whither he had gone, was actually clapped into prison, like
Girtin, as a refractory apprentice, until the facts had otherwise
transpired. Smith was, however, more kindly as well as more appre-
ciative of genius than Dayes had been ; for, although it happened
that DeVVintwas released from his apprenticeship before its time had
expired, the indentures being cancelled for a valuable consideration,
the terms of this transaction showed how highly the master esteemed
his pupil's work as an artist. It was on the lyth of May, 1806,
that young De Wint purchased his freedom under an agreement —
which he faithfully performed — to paint for Smith within the following
two years eighteen oil pictures (nine in each year) of specified sizes,
varying from 1 1 x 9 in. to 2 ft. 3 in. x I ft. 2 in.
Hilton's apprenticeship ending at about the same time, the two
young men continued to pursue together their careers in life.1 Before
settling in a joint lodging, however, each paid a visit to the other's
home. Hilton's father was a portrait-painter living at Lincoln, and
thither they first repaired. And there it fell out that De Wint fell
in love at the same time with Hilton's sister Harriet and with their
native city and the country round about it. Both became objects of
his devotion to the end of his life.
Then he travelled to his father's home in Staffordshire, sketching
on the way the High Tor at Matlock, ever after a favourite subject of
his; and Hilton followed soon after. It was in the autumn of 1806
that the two took up their quarters in Broad Street, Golden Square.
This, it will be recollected, is the same street in which at that time
resided John Varley, and De Wint is known to have derived much
benefit from gratuitous counsel and instruction in landscape art
received from that able expert. At about the same time De Wint
was received by Dr. Monro as one of the knot of students who
frequented his house in Adelphi Terrace. His kind host is said to
have much admired his sketches. There he became acquainted with
the works of Girtin, which were his favourites among all the drawings
in the Doctor's collection. And there he probably acquired the germ
of his future practice as a water-colour painter. The earliest drawing
known to the writer from the hand of De Wint is a sketch at South
Kensington, the gift of the artist's daughter, Mrs. Tatlock, called
' Tutbury Castle,' and attributed to the year 1805 or 1806. In it
1 Mr. Armstrong finds their names united as brother recruits in the ' St. Margaret's and
St. John's Volunteer' corps, about 1805.
CH. Ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 255
the influence of Girtin is so strongly marked that it might easily be
mistaken for a work by that master.1
In 1807 De Wint is first found exhibiting at the Royal Academy,
where he has two views in Staffordshire, one being of Trentham, and
a ' View of High Torr, Matlock,' doubtless from his sketch in the
preceding year. He must have been much occupied at this time
in executing his commission of pictures for Raphael Smith ; 2 but,
although his biographer declares that ' his strong preference was for
oils,' he seems already to have made up his mind to rely on water-
colour art for his living, and to adopt that as his professed branch
of painting.
In 1808, on the opening of the gallery of the Associated Artists,
he sent there four drawings for exhibition ; and he had nine there in
1809, in which year he was made a full Member of that body. One
of his drawings in 1 808 was a view of Westminster from the bridge ;
and two views in the following year were at Lincoln. These drawings
are much praised by a contemporary critic. He describes them as
being 'of the very first class. Correct observation of nature, fine
selection of form, with the greatest truth and simplicity of colour, are
the characteristics of his style. His works have all the indications of
superior thinking, all the germs of greatness.' 3
How long the fellow-students remained in Broad Street is not
clear. De Wint's address, as given in the catalogues of the above
exhibitions for 1807 and 1808, is 40 Windmill Street, Rathbone
Place. As his father died in May 1807, leaving the younger children
partly dependent on Peter, a change of residence may then have
been made. But wherever he was, it is probable that Hilton was
there also. An incident which occurred in February 1809 fixes a
date when at least they were together. Hilton was ill of a fever,
and his friend, while running for a doctor (De Wint, a nurse
more zealous than careful, having administered to the patient
vinegar instead of drugs), was impeded in his progress by the fire
that destroyed Drury Lane Theatre, which event happened on
the 24th of that month. Hilton, getting better, returned home
for a while, and De Wint, after spending the summer with him
at Lincoln, was alone for a few months in Carburton Street.
1 In the Northern Cambrian Mountains, folio, 1820, Plate 35 is a coloured aquatint of
' Chirk Castle : painted by De Wint from a sketch by T. Girtin,' engraved by T. Fielding.
* Some were of Lincoln. ' depository of Arts, i. 493 (1809).
256 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
On the 8th of March in the same year, 1809, he was admitted a
student at the Royal Academy, Hilton having entered the schools
there on leaving Smith's in 1806. In the autumn they again put
up together at No. 93 Norton Street, Fitzroy Square. By that time
a demand had arisen for De Wint's drawings, and he was receiving
many commissions.
It was on the I2th of February, 1810, that he was elected an
Associate of the Water-Colour Society, and on the i6th of June in
the same year Miss Hilton became his sympathetic partner for life.
He was then twenty-six years of age. His marriage did not separate
him from his old companion, now his brother-in-law, who lived with
the married couple in their new residence, No. 10 Percy Street, for
the next seventeen years. De Wint still continued to study at the
Academy, and was admitted to the Life School on the 1 6th of March,
1811. But in his profession as a landscape-painter he was now well
established, and on the roth of June in the same year became a full
Member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. In that year
his wife gave birth to a daughter, their only child. In the three
years 1810-1812 he exhibited in increasing numbers — eighteen
drawings in all — at Spring Gardens. Of these, three are professedly
views at Lincoln (one of the cathedral), one is ' Conisborough Castle,
Yorkshire,' and nearly all the rest, if not described simply as ' Land-
scapes,' are harvest scenes. It was in a similar round of home and
rural subjects that his great talents were displayed year by year
during the long space of his professional life.
It is probably to this early period only of De Wint's career that
his biographer's account must be taken to apply which records that
' at first he received no more than a guinea or so for a small drawing,
and five shillings an hour for lessons.' '
COPLEY FIELDING was another of the new comers who entered
the fraternity as a disciple, though not, as it has been asserted, a
regular pupil, of Varley's. He did not possess the originality or
native talent of a De Wint ; and in his case no tales are told of an
irresistible penchant for art that overcame all opposition. The per-
sistence required on his part was only what the task demanded of
fostering and improving such natural aptitude as he was found to
possess. At the same time, his great success and deserved popularity
1 Armstrong's Memoir of De Wint, p. 19.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 257
as an artist were due in no small degree to his own steadfastness and
perseverance. He seems indeed to have been consecrated to art in
his very baptism. The names that his godfathers and godmother had
bestowed upon him, in the church of East Sowerby, ' Anthony
Vandyke Copley,' high-sounding though they were, did not, it is
true, exactly foreshadow the line of art to which he afterwards
devoted himself. The last is a testimony to his father's friend-
ship for John Singleton Copley, R.A., the distinguished painter of
the ' Death of Lord Chatham ' &c., and father of Lord Chancellor
Lyndhurst. The first two indicate his respect for one of the greatest
of his own calling ; for Theodore Nathan Fielding, at the time of
his son Copley's birth, was in practice as a portrait painter, near
Halifax in Yorkshire. He had, however, painted landscapes before
he took to portraiture. He had four sons, at least, born at rather
long intervals, all of whom he encouraged in the use of the pencil
and all of whom became successful artists. Of these Copley, born
on the 22nd of November, 1787, was the second. His elder brother
was Theodore Henry Adolphus. The younger ones had the more
manageable names of Thales and Newton. Their mother was of a
respectable family in Yorkshire of the name of Barker.
A few months after Copley's birth, Mr. Fielding removed, with
his family, to London. The greater part of the lad's time was,
nevertheless, passed in the country. Even in infancy he had been
observed to be sensitive to the beauty of nature. A woody bank at
one time, a thunderstorm at another, made indelible impressions on
his mind before he was three years old. The walks, through fields,
to his preparatory school at Acton were, we may be sure, a greater
pleasure to him than they would have been to an ordinary child of
five. At the age of six, he chanced to see a pure spring bubbling
from under a stony bank with overhanging bushes, and the vision of
it kept recurring to his memory for years after. Yet we hear of none
of the early attempts to portray such objects which are so commonly
recorded in the lives of great artists. His education was desultory,
but he took great delight in reading.
His parents do not appear to have at first intended him for an artist.
Indeed, a record exists of his having actually entered upon a very dif-
ferent career. In a Memoir of Thomas Dodd, ' the last of the grand school
of connoisseurs,' privately printed at Liverpool for Joseph Mayer, F.S.A.,
in 1879, it is related that Dodd, when an engrossing clerk in the
s
258 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
Enrolment Office of the Court of Chancery, ' had two young clerks
under him, who were destined to become famous. They were the
sons of an old painter named Fielding, and were called Copley
and Raffael.' ' It was not, indeed, until Copley arrived at his
sixteenth year, when his father went to reside at the Lakes, that his
future profession was fixed. There the family established themselves
in a little cottage at Ambleside, and afterwards at Keswick ; and
there Mr. Fielding did his best to promote his sons' improvement in
the art of landscape.
His own qualifications as a teacher would be differently estimated
by the adherents of different schools. What they were may be
partly inferred from the following account of him at this period, from
notes written by the Rev. Mr. Barker, no doubt a relation of Mrs.
Fielding's : ' In the summer of 1804, the father of Copley Fielding
was a lively, active man, of easy access and agreeable conversation,
daily at the easel, painting con amore. He showed his pictures
readily, and not without much satisfaction. Of a head of an old man,
which he had recently painted, and which had elicited some admira-
tion, he said, " Yes, they call me the English Denner." * He painted
in oil, exclusively I think, and appeared as fond of landscape as of
old faces. In his room were several small pictures, chiefly landscapes,
painted by him and copied by his sons. Taking up one, he said,
"Copley, is this mine or yours ?" adding, " We copy each other so
exactly, it is difficult to know which is which." One day, on going in
I found Mr. Fielding finishing a small picture in oils of Keswick
Lake. In the sky was a light cloud elaborately painted, and principal
in effect. He joined in my admiration of it and said, pointing to
the cloud, " It would take a touch brighter," and after a pause, " No, I
don't know." My recollection of this picture is that it was laboured
in the touch throughout, of a uniform warmish green colour, and
wanted aerial hues, and consequently space and distance. Of another
small picture he showed me, of a bluish hue, he said, " I was deter-
mined to see what ultramarine would do." In colour it reminded me
a little of Paul Brill, or Velvet Breughel.'
1 Page 22. Whether ' Raffael ' was a fifth artist brother, does not appear.
2 The reader need scarcely be told that Denner is usually regarded as the type of a school
of imitative painters whose highest ambition is to copy, in a deceptive manner, the very
pores of the skin. Bryan calls him a ' laborious painter, whose works surprise by the toil-
some servility of their finish, as much as they disgust by a total absence of all that is esti-
mable in the art.' Probably Mr. Fielding's estimate was higher.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 259
But the father provided the young Fieldings with other and
better models than his own paintings. He was very desirous of their
improvement in the art, and used to send them out early in the
morning to draw from nature. ' They don't return,' said he, ' till the
evening, till it is dark ; and if that won't do, I know not what will.'
The lads, however, were not always employed with the brush, as
their father had supposed, from morn to dewy eve. Sometimes they
had with them, in their day's ramble, their only sister, a blooming
girl of sixteen or so, extremely healthy and active, as well as
adventurous, for she is said to have had the nerve to scramble across
the well-known mass of rock that is wedged over the chasm of
Dungeon ghyll. And Copley Fielding related in after years, with
much sly fun, how he and his brothers once laboured for a whole
morning, heaping up stones, not indeed, as Glover did in Dovedale,1
to make a stream more paintable, but to change the course of a
waterfall, when they knew that a party of tourists in search of the
picturesque were coming to admire its natural beauty.
The Fieldings had for a neighbour a painter whose works in
water-colour were good enough to exercise a salutary influence on
their art, whether it did or not — namely, Julius Caesar Ibbetson, then
living at the retired village of Troutbeck, about four miles from
Ambleside, with his second wife, whom he had married a few years
before. She, at least, visited the Fieldings. She is described as
young and handsome, and we seem to be familiar with her dark hair
and bright complexion, among the telling rustic groups that adorned
her husband's later landscapes.2
It was during this residence at the Lakes that the bias of Copley
Fielding's mind asserted its strength, and determined his lot in life.
The scenes he there met with filled him with delight. But for some
time he passed his days on the lakes, and in wanderings over rock
and mountain, through wood and through valley, storing his mind
1 Vide supra, p. 196.
2 Though he followed the old tinted method, Ibbetson was an effective painter in water-
colour, delicate in touch, though firm and decided. His painting in oil showed some resem-
blance to his friend Morland's, and to that of Berghem, whom he copied. In 1803, he
published the first and only part of An Accidence or Gamut in Oil and Water-Colours, the first
edition of which he illustrated with original specimens, apparently painting two separate
examples, one in oils and one in water-colours, for each copy of the work, of different
designs. He was born in 1759 and died in 1817. His reputation has suffered from associa-
tion with Morland's, let us hope on no better ground than that of Thomas Girtin. Soma
excellent drawings by Ibbetson were in the late Dr. Percy's collection.
s 2
260 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
with impressions, and leading a kind of enchanted life, without making
any serious attempt to put into form his floating ideas. His daughter
declares that it was the sight and study at this time of some of
Wilson's pictures that inspired him with the desire to be an artist.
And the fact accords with the theory that Fielding's success in
practice did not arise from any marked originality of conception.
From this study of Wilson he derived great benefit, particularly
from a copy which he made in water-colours of 'Apollo and the
Seasons.' ' They assisted,' writes Miss Fielding, ' ' in forming that
correct taste which could only be satisfied with the works of the first
Masters.'
In 1807 he accompanied his father to Liverpool, and, offering his
drawings for sale there, was encouraged by an amount of patronage
which he always referred to with expressions of gratitude.2 In 1808
he made a tour in Wales, by Flint and the Vale of Clwyd to Chester.
But a visit to town in the same year, to see the exhibitions, for the
first time opened out to him a prospect of greater advantage than
could be expected at Liverpool, and induced him to settle in London
in the autumn of 1809. There he enjoyed the great benefit of assist-
ance from Varley in the formation of his artistic style, though he
never was an actual pupil, as it has been asserted, of that excellent
artist's. He ' came to town,' writes Cornelius Varley,3 ' with indifferent
drawings, and received most free instruction and advice, as a friend,'
from John, who, we know, was always ready and willing to lend a
helping hand in this way to his professional brethren. Of Varley's
genius and liberality, Fielding always spoke with the highest com-
mendation. In order to be near him, he took a lodging in Wells
Street. Varley was then living in Broad Street, Golden Square. He
does not seem to have been sanguine at first of the student's success.
Observing the slowness with which the young man imbibed his
principles, Varley was even induced, it is said, to dissuade him from
his professional pursuit. But Fielding was not lightly to be deterred
1 MS.
* Carey in his Letter to J. A. (28 April, 1809), p. 19, writes from Manchester : ' Fielding is
here, a veteran artist whose old heads in the manner of Denner are purchased at high prices
by the admirers of that master. ... He has a son, a young artist of great merit, who gives
instructions as a drawing master at Liverpool. I do not know him, but I saw at the house
of Mr. Harrison, a merchant of that town, among other clever drawings by young Fielding,
a moonlight view of Melrose Abbey, from Walter Scott's Marmion, in which there was a very
lovely stillness and solemnity.'
> MS.
CH. Ill AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 261
from treading the path of life which had been chalked out for him.
Varley recommended him to make coloured sketches from nature in
the neighbourhood of London, and acting upon his advice, and guided
by his criticism, he by the end of that year had acquired proficiency
enough to obtain his election as an Associate of the Water-Colour
Society in January 1810. In the season that followed, he exhibited
his first five drawings at Spring Gardens, most of them views in the
Lake district.
When the exhibition closed, he went into Cumberland to study
nature and visit his brother Theodore at Penrith, going afterwards to
Carlisle and making an excursion to Haworth Castle, Lanercost
Priory, and down Tynedale as far as Hexham, &c. In the following
month he made a tour in Scotland — through Dumfries and Selkirk
to Melrose and back to Carlisle. Results of this tour were seen in
the exhibition of 1811. At the close of that summer he went to
Liverpool, and paid another visit to Wales, which furnished some of
his subjects of 1812. He was then on the threshold of the more im-
portant period of his career, and there he must be left, in order that
some account may be rendered of other new Associates, with names
less widely known in the present day.
WILLIAM WESTALL, who was elected five months after Fielding,
contributed only twelve drawings (in 1811 and 1812) to the Society's
exhibitions, and but a third of these belong to the branch of art which
he specially represented. His experience had been of no ordinary
kind. He was a younger brother, by no less than sixteen years, of
Richard Westall, R. A., whose leading position in the figure school has
been above recorded, and from whom he had received his early in-
struction. But his own practice had been in a very different and
much wider field. He had been a great traveller, and the labours by
which he was distinguished give him an important place in the line of
topographic artists whose mission it was to portray distant parts of
the earth's surface. While his brother draftsmen were devoting their
energies to the better cultivation of the art itself by continued practice
at home, by repeating under varied aspects the selfsame views
among their Welsh mountains, and studying again and again familia'r
scenes of native life and landscape, Westall had been bringing new
material within the range of its application.
He was born on the I2th of October, 1781, at Hertford, whither
262 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
his parents had removed from Norwich, to which city the family
belonged. His early years were spent still nearer London, at Syden-
ham and Hampstcad. His passion for art was displayed when he
was very young, and he would play truant from school to sketch from
nature. He was under nineteen, a probationer at the Royal Academy,
when President West picked him cut as fit fora Government appoint-
ment as landscape draftsman to a discovery ship about to sail for
what geographers called ' Terra Australis,' and less classic linguists
' the fifth quarter of the globe.' ' Thenceforth much of his life had
been passed in perilous adventure. Embarking in H.M.S. Investigator,
Commander Flinders, which sailed from Spithead on the 1 8th of July,
1801, he soon had an opportunity of plying his pencil. Landing at
Madeira, a scientific party explored the interior, and Westall, going
with them, made many sketches of the scenery. On their return to
the ship, however, the native boatmen upset them into the surf, and
besides losing all the fruits of his toil, our artist was nearly drowned.
Next he was struck down and again brought to death's door by a
coup de soleil. For two years the ship continued her cruise, and then
she was found to be unseaworthy and left at Port Jackson ; Westall
and most of the voyagers being transferred to H.M.S. Porpoise, which,
instead of bringing them safely back to England, deposited them on
a small coral reef in the Pacific, whence they were rescued after a
lapse of eight weeks. Westall, who had happily saved most of his
drawings, was carried off to China by the good ship Rolla, and re-
mained some months at Canton, sketching there and up the river
memoranda of the scenery and its celestial inhabitants. Thence he
sailed to Bombay, where he was the first to contradict a report that
he and his shipwrecked companions had perished on their reef.
Since Westall had left England, the short peace with France had
come and gone ; and he chanced to be an eye-witness of the first
naval success of the new war. For the ship 2 in which he had set
sail from China was one of the fleet of merchantmen with which the
gallant Commodore Dance, of the East India Company's service, beat
1 William Daniell, afterwards R.A., had been first appointed, but, becoming engaged to
be married to Westall's eldest sister, preferred to stay at home. Probably he, as well as
West, had a voice in the selection of the substitute.
2 As Lieut. Fowler, R.N. , who had commanded the ill-fated Porpoise, and was of great
service in this action, had embarked as a passenger in Dance's ship, the Earl Camdcn, it is
probable that Westall was with him in that vessel. The Rolla had also been put under Dance's
charge, to convoy, but had somehow got left behind at Macao. (See Annual Register,
PP- 5Si, 552- )
CH. II! AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 263
off and pursued a French squadron under Admiral Linois, in the
Straits of Malacca, on the i$th of February, 1804. The good will of
the Duke of Wellington (then commanding in India as Sir Arthur
Wellesley) enabled our artist to explore the mountains of the
Mahratta country ; and among those of the Boa Ghaut he fell in
with the victorious Indian army, that had fought the battle of Assay e
in the preceding September. He also visited the temples of Kurlee
and Elephanta, and other places of interest, of which he made careful
drawings on the spot.
During his travels in India, Westall was appalled by sufferings
which met his eye, the effects of famine and drought. His son tells
us that ' he was always much affected when alluding, in after life, to
the horrors he here beheld,' and relates at 'the same time an anecdote
which exemplifies his kindness of heart.1 One of his servants, having
taken advantage of the utter destitution of a native family, had, as a
slave speculation, purchased an only remaining son for little more
than a meal and a few pounds of rice. Westall, shocked and
disgusted with the sordid cruelty of the transaction, watched his
opportunity, and when he had to cross from the coast to Bombay
island, the servants and baggage being aboard, and he and the new
slave alone remaining ashore to be conveyed to the vessel, slipped
some money into the young man's hand, and silently pointed to his
native mountains. The youth 'threw himself on the ground and
kissed his benefactor's feet, then with the swiftness of a deer darted
towards his home, and was out of sight in a few minutes,' leaving the
discomfited servant ' lamenting ' (like my Lord Ullin) on the vessel's
deck.
At Bombay, Westall received kind attentions from Sir James
Mackintosh, then residing there as Recorder, and in return gave his
daughter lessons in drawing. He described Sir James as suffering
from nostalgia. He himself too had a mind to see his own land
again. He had left home, a lad, before Girtin went to Paris. Now
he had grown to man's estate, and, returning to England, found a
new page open in the annals of his profession. The Water-Colour
Society was formed, and blossoming in its first exhibition.
But Westall could not settle down so soon to home work. The
taste for travel was yet upon him, and off he went to Madeira in 1805,
1 Art Journal, Memoir of Wm. Westall, A.R.A. (l April, 1850, p. 104), from which
most of the above account is derived.
264 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK iv
to pass a year there in great enjoyment, and make up in new sketches
the loss of his first portfolio ; receiving there much kindness from
the British residents, and, by painting the houses of planters and
merchants, raising a sufficient fund to enable him to cross the
Atlantic and complete his collection of drawings with a large number
of sketches made during a few further months in Jamaica.
Returning to England once more, he set to work to make pictures
out of the materials he had collected in the two hemispheres ; and in
1 808 opened an exhibition of his own, in Brook Street, of water-
colour drawings of the scenes and places he had visited. It did not
however, arouse the expected interest, and Westall had to fall back
upon home scenes, in which he had to compete with artists to whom
they were more familiar.
He joined the ' Associated Artists ' in water-colours as an exhibit-
ing Member in 1808 and 1809. In the first of these years he had
ten works in their gallery, all foreign views. In the second he had
fifteen, whereof the greater number were home subjects, from
Worcestershire and the Wye. His works of the former class are
favourably noticed at some length in John Landseer's Review of
Publications in Art (1808), but the latter called forth the remark of a
contemporary critic that the artist's unsuccessful delineations of
English scenery had shaken previous belief in the truth of his
foreign views.1 He was now, however, obtaining commissions to
paint oil pictures, and, on the ground that his time was so occupied, he
sent in his resignation on the 2/th of June, 1809. Nevertheless he
became an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours on
the nth of June, 1810. With his few drawings at Spring Gardens of
views in China, Madeira, and New South Wales, were some of the
London Thames and Rievaulx Abbey.
He had only now begun to prepare for publication the set of
drawings made during the ill-fated voyage of discovery ; the history
as well as the completion of which had been delayed by adverse fate.
Long and far as our artist had wandered, after his rescue from the
coral reef, he had got back to England years before his less fortunate
commander. Flinders was picked up by a small schooner, the Cumber-
land, and on the way home, while his brave lieutenant was fighting
the French with such success in the Malacca Strait, was captured
by the enemy ; and he was detained in a long and cruel confinement
1 Ackermann's Repository, \. 493.
CH. in AT SPRING GARDENS, 1809-1812 265
in the island of Mauritius. He did not arrive in England until the
very year 1810 when Westall joined the Water-Colour Society, and
the book of travels was not published until after that artist's connexion
with the Society had ceased.
The name of WILLIAM SCOTT, though he was a competent
painter, and long an exhibitor with the Society, has left no strong
mark in its annals. Scarcely anything has been recorded of his per-
sonal history, and the dates of his birth and death are alike unknown.
Even the industrious Redgrave tells us less than we gather from the
catalogues. His home was Brighton, whence, says that writer, he
seldom strayed abroad ; and ' home scenery and cottages of Sussex
and Surrey ' were the class of subjects which introduced him to our
gallery in 181 1. He then brought five drawings. The next year he
had three, two of which were from Edinburgh. In the catalogue for
the latter year, a work by him is advertized, with the title ' Six
Etchings on Stone, printed on brown crayon paper and retouched
with white, to imitate drawings in black and white chalk,' to be had
of P. S. Munn, New Bond Street, and of other ' persons in London '
therein named.
As the three Associates, Charles Barber, Luke Clennell, and,
lastly not least, David Cox, were not elected until after the close of
the exhibition of 1812, their names do not virtually belong to the
period of the Society's annals which this year brought to an end.
More special notice of them will therefore be reserved for its proper
place in the chronicle of the succeeding period, when their names
and works are first recorded in the exhibition catalogue. The
election at the same time, namely on the 8th of June, 1812, of Wild
and Pugin as full Members, was, as it turned out, little more than
nominal, by reason of important events which have now to be related.
266
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
BK. IV
CHAPTER IV
FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY
Statistics — Decline of prosperity — Further history of ' Associated Artists ' — Their decline
and fall— Proposal to extend the Society — Its dissolution— Final biographies of retiring
Members— Wells— Rigaud— Reinagle— C/talan—The ' Sketching Society '— Westall.
IT has now to be explained why this particular epoch of 1812 has
been selected to terminate the first stage of our Society's history.
For this purpose recourse must be had to the minute-books of the
committee and general meetings during that period. The following
schedule compiled therefrom will exhibit at a glance the progress
of the Society, considered purely as a business undertaking, from
its first exhibition in 1805 to that of 1812.
Year
Members
Asso-
ciates
Drawings
Admissions
on payment
Members' valuations
Surplus divided
£ '• d.
£ s. d.
1805
16
_
275
11,542-
2,860 o o
270 19 o
1806
16
8
301
12,439
Return wanting
440 3 o
1807
18
8
324
14,366
4,380 i o
47i 7 i°i
1808
19
7
334
18,999
5,787 i 6
445 14 8
1809
20
7
34'
22,967
5,222 5 0
626 6 ill
1810
22
8
328
20,030
4,807 17 o
480 14 o
1811
24
8
369
19,067
6,610 15 6
523 7 5
1812
25
6
341
10,624
4,498 ii 6
121 18 4
It appears by this statement that until 1810 there had been
a satisfactory improvement in the Society's position almost year by
year. The public had been attracted in constantly increasing
numbers. Artists who had held aloof while success appeared
doubtful had eagerly sought admission when the permanence of the
Society seemed assured, with a growing surplus to be distributed at
the close of each season rateably on the sum each Member set upon
his works. In 1809, when the Society moved to Spring Gardens,
this prosperity was at its height. The number of paid admissions
1 Approximately.
CH. iv FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 267
had risen to nearly 23,000, and every Member received a profit little
under 12 per cent, upon the price he had assigned to his contribu-
tions. Heaphy in that year came in for as much as I3O/., Glover
IO4/., and the rest in due proportion. No one seems to have
questioned the prudence of so dividing the whole of the profits,
though this practice proved in the end a source of danger that
threatened the existence of the Society. Successful beyond their
expectations, they hardly contemplated future reverses or the
difficulties they had to encounter, which a wise reserve of their
funds might have been the means of averting. But after this year
there came a turn of the tide. Patronage, with its attendant profits,
began from that time to diminish, and in 1812 there was a sudden
and serious drop to a lower level in both respects than that at which
the Society had ever stood. It was plainly suffering from a general
depression of the times, which told with peculiar severity on the
artists' craft. The renewed contest with France had strained the
resources of the wealthy, and public attention was now absorbed in
the events of the Peninsular War.
When the account was taken after the close of that year's ex-
hibition, the balance of profit was found to be so small as to excite
reasonable apprehension of a future loss. On Thursday, the 5th of
November, 1812, the Society met at Hills's house to take this state
of things into consideration, and discuss the prospects of the en-
suing season. According to an estimate then made, it did not
appear likely that more than 230 drawings would be forthcoming
for the next show, a number less by nearly a third than had been
exhibited in the preceding spring. It was evident that a serious
crisis had arrived in the Society's affairs.
The Members, moreover, could not disregard the warning which
had been given by recent events outside their Society. Their rivals
in Bond Street had been in still greater trouble. The Associated
Artists had fairly broken down under its weight, and ended their
career in disaster. The remaining chief facts of their history may
here be entered on the record.
During the period now concluded the two Water-Colour Exhibi-
tions, at Spring Gardens and in Bond Street, had come to be regarded
as concurrent annual sights of the London season. The Associated
Artists had removed from Brook Street to 1 10 New Bond Street in
268 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
1809. From 1810 to 1812 they were at 16 Old Bond Street. Before
the second exhibition (in 1809) they lost four Members : H. P. Bone,
Alfred E. Chalon, Miss Emma Smith, and H. W. Watts. Their
places were, for the time, well supplied by P. De Wint, J. Holmes,
Frederick Nash, and J. Clarendon Smith. Before the exhibition of
1810, however, De Wint, Nash, and Westall seceded to join the older
Society, and J. B. Papworth, W. J. Thompson, and H. W. Williams
also ceased to be active Members. Papworth, who had been Secre-
tary, was afterwards made an Honorary Member. In the place of
these six, a strong reserve of eight artists was then brought up to
reinforce the ranks. The new Members were Luke Clennell, John
Sell Cotman, David Cox, W. M. Craig, Louis Francia, Mrs. Meen,
Samuel Prout, and Henry Richter. Some of these were of great
future distinction, and the majority were, sooner or later, to become
Members of the Water-Colour Society. David Cox at the same time
succeeded William Wood as President for the year. The number of
Members was thus raised from eighteen to twenty, and about as
many non-Members were annually admitted as Exhibitors. The
works exhibited each year varied in amount between the limits of
266 (in 1809) and 345 (in 1810).
With such constituent elements as these, the series of shows in
Bond Street could scarcely fail to be a formidable rival to those at
Spring Gardens. The body of skilful painters who afterwards con-
stituted the strength of the Water-Colour Society, when it came again
to stand alone in the field, was, at the period we are considering,
divided in no very unequal proportions between the two annual ex-
hibitions. At that time, the after leaders of the landscape school,
Cox, De Wint, Prout ; the architectural draftsmen, F. Nash and Mac-
kenzie ; Cotman, excelling in both departments and in marine also ; the
subject-painters,/. Steplianoff, Holmes, Richter, and Clennell ; William
Westall, too, the traveller ; all these were exhibiting with the Asso-
ciated Artists before any of them joined the Society where Varley
and Havell, Nicholson and Glover, Barret, Cristall, and their earlier
confreres, retained a supremacy as yet undisputed. The first-named
•no doubt, were younger men, some of whom — Prout for example —
had not yet felt their full strength or acquired their maturer style.
They were, moreover, immersed in a crowd of obscure practitioners,
so that the exhibitions in Bond Street were, as a whole, less select in
quality than those at Spring Gardens, and contained ' a large proper-
CH. iv FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 269
tion of bad and hasty works.' The former might perhaps more truly
be described as a nursery for, than as a rival of, the latter.
In general character, the contents of the two galleries had much
in common. ' The first thing,' says a contemporary reviewer in June
1 8 io,' ' that strikes an observer, both at Spring Gardens and Bond
Street, is the overwhelming proportion of landscapes, a proportion
almost as unreasonable as that of the portraits at Somerset House.
In pacing round the rooms the spectator experiences sensations some-
what similar to those of an outside passenger on a mail-coach making
a picturesque and picturizing journey to the North. Mountains and
cataracts, rivers, lakes, and woods, deep romantic glens and sublime
sweeps of country, engage his eye in endless and ever-varying succes-
sion. For a while he is delighted, but as he proceeds the pleasure
gradually fades ; he feels that even in variety there may be sameness,
and would freely exchange a dozen leagues of charming landscape for
a scene among " the busy haunts of men." '
In works of the ' subject ' class no artist of the rival association
could rise to the refinement of Cristall, or even emulate the delicate
sweetness of Uwins. The class of figure-painting there represented
was rather the correlative of Heaphy's, having more of a popular than
an artistic aim. Richter, indeed, had some ' emblematical riddles,' but
such titles as 'The Taylor's [sic] Bill,' 'A Visit to the Cunning
Woman,' ' The Brute of a Husband,' indicate his most taking works.
Holmes followed the same line in 'The Doubtful Shilling' (1810), a
scene in a butcher's shop ; and ' Miseries of Human Life,' wherein
paterfamilias displayed his temper before an underdone joint. Clennell,
too, was a prolific contributor, successful in various subjects of real life,
from ' Greathead's Lifeboat, putting off to relieve a Vessel in Distress,'
down to a ' Cellarman bottling Liquors.'
In 1810 the name of the Society underwent further modification,
becoming the ' Associated Painters in Water-Colours.' In the next
year, 1811, the numbers of exhibitors and of works exhibited are both
somewhat diminished, and symptoms arise of financial difficulty ; the
following confession of failure being printed in the catalogue, by way
of apology for the raising of its price from sixpence to a shilling :
' Some surprise having been expressed on account of the increase in
the price of the catalogue of the present Exhibition, it is thought
proper to state that the expenses of the Establishment, chiefly owing
1 See Ackermann's Repository, iii. 423 and 432-435.
2/o THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805 1812 UK. iv
to its situation, greatly exceed those incurred by any other Body of
Artists in the United Kingdom, and that these expenses will perhaps
eventually rest upon no more than Eight Persons, who, sensible of the
stimulus which this Society has given to the Arts, have, though at a
great and certain loss, determined to continue its support, and to
communicate gratis the advantages it affords to all Artists of real
merit. They have, therefore, ventured to add to the price of their
Catalogue, as a trifling means of lessening their expenses, and with
the direct view of throwing a small part of the burthen they have
spiritedly undertaken upon the liberality of the Public.1 The list of
contributors is at the same time further divided, nine out of the twenty
exhibiting Members being placed in a distinct class under the title of
' Associated Members.' One of these, John Laporte, withdrew before
the following season ; but the remainder, who were still true to their
colours in 1812, may be assumed to have been the eight spirited
enthusiasts above referred to. These were : Henry Richter (Presi-
dent), W. J. Bennett (Treasurer), L. Francia (Secretary), David Cox,
W. M. Craig, J. Huet-Villiers, J. Holmes, and W. Walker.
The exhibition of 1812 was the last expiring effort of the Bond
Street association. To ensure popularity they employed fresh
devices, even to the extent of abandoning the original lines upon
which that society had been constituted. Oil paintings were
admitted ' as well as water-colour drawings, and the number of
exhibitors was largely increased. Among the Members for this year
was William Blake, who exhibited his extraordinary pictures of the
' Spiritual Forms ' of Pitt 2 and Nelson, guiding Behemoth and
Leviathan respectively, and his well-known 'Canterbury Pilgrims
leaving the Tabarde Inn.' Richter had an oil picture of ' Christ
restoring the Blind to Sight ; ' and Francia painted in the same
medium a pendant to a Poussin which Sir Thomas Baring had ex-
hibited in the British Institution. Holmes had a popular present-
ment of a refractory schoolboy, and Frederick Mackenzie continued a
series of excellent studies for Ackermann's aquatint illustrations of
Westminster Abbey.
In spite of these and other attractions, the exhibition was a com-
mercial failure. The associated eight had been only too just in their
anticipation of loss. Instead of a surplus of profit remaining, as in
1 Ackermann's Repository, vii. 336.
1 That of Pitt is now in the National Gallery, No. 1 1 10.
CH. IV
FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY
271
the case of the old Society, for distribution among Members, there
was not enough in hand to pay expenses; and, finally, down came the
landlord, and seized the contents of the gallery in distraint of rent.
The chief sufferer was David Cox, the whole of his year's drawings
being taken from him and sold without compensation, which, even at
the small prices they then fetched, inflicted a serious loss upon the
rising painter.
Thus closed the short career of the ' Associated Artists ' (or
Painters) in Water-Colours.1 Catalogues of the five exhibitions are
to be found in the excellent Art Library at the South Kensington
Museum. But as copies are very scarce, it has been thought ex-
pedient to compile, for the convenience of collectors and others, the
following alphabetical list of the Members and Exhibitors, with an
indication of the capacities in which they appear in the several exhi-
bitions. Those whose names are in small capitals afterwards became
Members, and those in italics Associates of our Society.
MEMBERS AND EXHIBITORS OF AND WITH THE
ASSOCIATED ARTISTS (OR PAINTERS} IN WATER-COLOURS.
P signifies President ; T, Treasurer ; S, Secretary ; M, Member ; HM, Honorary
Member ; AM, Associated Member ; E, Exhibitor ; HE, Honorary Exhibitor.
IN
1808
:ATALOGI
1809
E OF EX
1810
1IBITION
l8ll
OF
1812
Annis, W. .
E
Barber, C. .
E
M
M
Barker, B. .
M
Baxter, Thomas .
E
Baynes, James
E
E
M
M
Bennett, William James
M
M
M
T
T
Betham, Miss
E
E
Blake, W. .
M
Bone, Henry Pierce
M
Bourlier, Miss
E
Brighty, G. M. .
E
Brooke, W. H. .
E
E
Burden, J.
E
Cartwright, C. M.
E
Cawse, J.
E
Chalon, Alfred
M
Clennell, Luke
M
M
M
Cockburn, R.
E
Compton, T.
E
Conde, P.
E
E
Coney, J.
E
1 The sources of confusion arising from similarity of names and places appear to be inex-
haustible. There was yet to be another body of ' Associated Painters in Water-Colours, '
which held three exhibidons at 16 Old Bond Street in 1832-34. It was started by the late
Mr. James Fahey, and was the origin of the ' New Society of Painters in Water-Colours,"
now the ' Royal Institute.' (See Aihenaitm, 19 Dec. 1885, and infrj.)
273
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
BK. IV
MEMBERS AND EXHIBITORS &c. — continued.
IN
1808
CATALOGl
1809
E OK EX
1810
1IBITION
1811
OF
1812
Cooper, G. .
E
Cotman, J. S. . . .
M
M
Cox, DAVID.
E
P
AM
AM
Craig.J
E
E
Craig, W. M.
E
M
AM
AM
Dagley, R
E
De Barde, Chevalier
E
DE WINT, P. ...
E
M
Dighton, D
E
Dinsdale, George .
E
E
Dixon, J. . .
E
Dixon, Robert
E
Douglass, J. . . .
E
E
Foster, W
E
Francia, L. . .
E
M
S
S
Gartside, Miss
E
Gauci, M. .
E
Goddard, J. (Strand) .
Goddard, J. (Upper Grosvenor
E
Street) ....
E
Goodman, T.
E
Goodwin, E. ...
E
E
E
E
Green, James . .
T
T
T
Green, Mrs. ....
M
M
M
Green, W
E
E
Hassell, J
E
Hayter, G
M
Hewlett, J
E
E
E
M
M
Hoffland, T. C. .
E
HOLMES, J
E
M
M
AM
AM
Huet-Villiers, J. .
M
M
M
AM
AM
Ibbetson, John
HE
E
Jones, Mrs. S. . . .
E
Kennion, Charles James
E
Laporte, John
M
M
M
AM
E
Leschallas, J.
E
E
Leveque, J. .
E
MACKENZIE, FRED.
E
M
Martin, — . . . .
E
Meen, Mrs. ....
M
Morton, H. .
E
E
NASH, FREDERICK
E
M
O'Neill, H
E
Owen, Samuel
M
M
M
Papworth, John
M
S
HM
HM
Pearson, William .
E
E
Perkins, L. . . .
E
Powell, Joseph
E
E
E
E
E
PROUT, S
M
M
M
RICHTER, HENRY
E
M
P
P
Roberts, T. Santell
E
Robertson, Andrew
S
M
M
Robertson, C.
E
Robertson, C. J. .
E
ROBSON, G. F. .
E
M
M
Sass, Richard
E
Schetky, J
Schetky, J. C.
E
E
E
E
M
M
M
M
Shepperson, M.
E
E
CII. IV
FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY
MEMBERS AND EXHIBITORS &c. — continued.
273
IN
1808
CATALOG I
1809
E OF EXJ
1810
ilBITION
1811
OF
1812
Smith, Miss Emma
M
Smith, J. Clarendon
E
M
M
Smith, S
E
E
Stanley, C. R. .
E
Steele, Miss J.
E
M
Stephanoff, F. P. .
E
E
M
STEPHANOFF, JAMES .
E
E
M
M
Stump, S. J.
E
Thomson, D.
E
Thomson, William John (or
Thompson)
M
M
Tulloch, Mrs.
E
E
Turner, C. .
E
Upham, — .
E
Walker, William (Junior)
M
M
M
AM
AM
Watts, William Henry .
M
WESTALL, WILLIAM
M
M
Williams, H. W. .
M
M
Wilson, Andrew .
M
M
S
Wood, William .
P
P
M
Events had thus appeared to demonstrate that there were as yet
no sufficient means of subsistence for two co-ordinate societies. Nor
was the survivor so conscious of vitality as to neglect the opportunity
now offered of engrafting upon its own system any profitable element
which had appertained to the defunct association.
At the meeting at Hills's before referred to, on the 5th of
November, 1812, it was first proposed to extend the scope of the
exhibition in Spring Gardens, by inviting the co-operation of all
painters in water-colours. But a resolution to this effect was rejected
by a decisive majority, and a second proposal of a far more subver-
sive kind was made and accepted. This was in fact to do what had
been done by the rival Society in the last fatal year of its existence.
A resolution was carried by a majority of ten to eight, ' that in
future Members and Associates of this Society may send Oil Pictures
as well as Drawings for Exhibition.' All the Members entitled to
take part in the proceedings were present at this meeting, except
Gilpin, Pocock, Pugin, Uwins, and Westall. At a further meeting,
held at Glover's house in Montagu Square on the following Thurs-
day, of eighteen Members, including Pugin and Uwins, this important
subject was submitted to a long discussion, and the law admitting
oil pictures was confirmed on a division, by the casting vote of
Cornelius Varley. The result of this victory of the revolutionary
274 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 EK. IV
party was that Chalon, Stevens, and Dorrell immediately tendered
their resignations. President Reinagle, also, in a letter (appa-
rently not preserved) expressed his sentiments on the admission of
oil pictures into the future exhibitions. They seem to have been
unfavourable ; for he took no further part in the affairs of the
Society.
Four days after, however, on the i6th, there was another muster,
at Glover's, of eighteen Members, who rescinded the above resolutions,
and substituted the following : ' That the Society was established, as
the preface to their first Catalogue declares, for the purpose of
forming an Exhibition, which, consisting of " Water-Colour Pictures
only, must from that circumstance give them a better arrangement
and a fairer ground of appreciation than when mixed with Pictures
in Oil." That the admission of Pictures in Oil would entirely change
the character of the Society, and prove a manifest dereliction of that
principle upon which they have hitherto uniformly laid their claim to
the public support. That therefore the said Law admitting oil
Pictures be rescinded. That, unconscious as the Society feel of any
relaxation in their efforts to deserve public patronage, that patronage
has been withdrawn from their two last Exhibitions. That, upon
inquiry among the Members respecting the degree of support likely
to be brought forward in their ensuing Exhibition, they cannot draw a
hope of forming one that will in any degree vie with their last. That
with such an evident decline in their Exhibition, the Society can see
no other prospect than that of a serious deficiency in their receipts
(those of the present year having done little more than cover their
expences) and still further neglect from the Public. That therefore
the Society do consider itself as dissolved on Monday, November 3<3th,
its Anniversary, but that Members be summoned to attend on that
day at Mr. Hills's at seven in the evening to receive the Report of
their Committee, who are requested to be prepared with a final adjust-
ment of the Society's affairs.'
Thus on its eighth birthday the young Society, which first drew
breath at the Stratford Coffee House in Oxford Street on the 3Oth of
November, 1804, met at the house of their secretary, Robert Hills,
No. 1 5 London Street, Fitzroy Square, with the intent of deliberate
suicide. This final meeting was attended by Wells, Nicholson,
Pocock, Chalon. Pugin, Nash, C. Varley, Rigaud, Smith, De Wint,
Ilavcll, Uwins, Barret, Dorrell, Glover, Holworthy, J. Varley, Cristali,
CH. IV FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 275
Atkinson, Wild, and Hills. Havell took the chair, and for the long
chain of resolutions above quoted was substituted the following short
epitome of their result : ' That the Society, having found it imprac-
ticable to form another Exhibition of Water-Colour Paintings only,
do consider itself dissolved this night.' The books, vouchers &c.
were ordered to be retained for reference in the hands of Rigaud
and Hills, the treasurer and secretary of the moribund Society, and,
with an entry to that effect, its minutes come to an end.
We shall see, however, that the Society, taking indeed for a time
a somewhat altered shape, was soon to spring again, like the Phcenix
from its ashes. But certain of the old constituent elements were to
form no part of the new body. A farewell has therefore to be taken
of some of our present acquaintance, before again resuming the
thread of the main history.
Eight years had now passed over the heads of the original
Members of the Water-Colour Society, and the same number of
summers and winters had had their effect, whether of ripening or
decay, upon the artists and their art. Of the little group of founders,
the names of Wells and Rigaud appear no more.
WELLS was now upwards of fifty. He had been an annual con-
tributor to the gallery since 1805, to the number of about ninety
works in all, but had exhibited no more than seven during the last
three out of the five seasons. Besides subjects from his old sketches
in Norway, and a few others from foreign lands (some doubtless from
sketches by other travellers), his drawings include views in Kent,
where he had the house at Knockholt in which the great Turner
planned his Liber ; and in Wales, where, during a professional tour,
he made sketches that came into the collection of Mr. Hibbert (to
whom the volume of Gainsborough fac-similes by him and Laporte
was dedicated). There were also ' landscape compositions,' and a
few rustic figures. He had at the same time continued to exercise
his calling as a teacher. Upon the completion of Addiscombe
College he was appointed the first Professor of Drawing to that
institution, an office he retained for twenty years.
Wells was a man of industrious habits and fond of books. His
latter days were passed in easy retirement, and he still enjoyed in
quiet the partial practice of his art, at a cottage he purchased at
Mitcham, where he lived for some years before his death. That
276 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805 1812 UK. iv
event took place there on the loth of November, 1836, in the seventy-
fourth year of his age.
RlGAUD had pursued his wonted path in the fields of fancy,
exhibiting from three to ten drawings a year, amounting to fifty in
all. One-fifth at least are sacred subjects, from the New or the Old
Testament. The rest are for the most part illustrations of heathen
mythology, and of the writings of Milton, Spenser and other British
poets. A considerable number are from Ossian, and a few of the
earlier, as already stated, are pure allegory. After severing from his
former colleagues he showed his pictures again at the Royal Academy
until 1815, and also at the British Institution and the Society of
British Artists until 1852. In 1814 he exhibited a large picture
of the ' Invasion of France ' in the preceding year, with portraits of
Wellington and his generals. Including the fifty drawings at our
Society, his exhibited works amounted in number to II8.1
The date and place of his death, as of his birth, have not been
ascertained. During his membership he had moved from Titchfield
Street to 48 London Street, Fitzroy Square, and thence to 19 Upper
Thornhaugh Street, Bedford Square, all in the same much frequented
artist quarter of London. Rigaud's name appears once more, how-
ever, in the records of the Society, long after its last reconstruction,
and in the days of its subsequent prosperity. It is recorded on the
minutes of 3 August, 1849, that 'the Secretary read a letter from Mr.
Rigaud, one of the original founders of the Society in 1804, stating
his desire to be again recognized as a Member. The Secretary was
directed to communicate to Mr. Rigaud that his letter had been
heard with much interest, and with the respect due to a communication
from the only surviving 2 original Member, but that according to the
Laws it would be necessary for Mr. Rigaud to present some of his
recent works for the consideration of the Society in the usual way of
election, &c.' No further mention is made of the application.
Final notice has to be taken at this epoch of several other artists
with whose names the reader is more or less familiar. Reinagle,
Chalon and Westall took no part in the proceedings of the new
1 Graves's Dictionary.
1 This was an error. Cornelius Varley was the last survivor. And, moreover, Rigaud
was not one of the ten actual founders, though he joined them immediately after their union
took place.
CH. IV FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 277
Society. All three soon became Associates, and afterwards full
Members, of the Royal Academy.
R. R. REINAGLE, who was President at the time of the dissolution,
had been a steady contributor. He had exhibited sixty-two draw-
ings, from first to last, all of them scenes in South Italy, or views in
the PLnglish Lake district. No doubt they were carefully composed
pictures. The artist, in describing them for the catalogue, is fond of
specifying topographic particulars at more than usual length, and is
careful to add the time of day at which the picture is supposed to be
painted, as ' early in the morning,' ' forenoon,' ' noon,' ' sunset,' ' even-
ing,' ' twilight,' and the like.
He was thirty-seven when his connexion with the Water-Colour
Society ceased, and a great part of his artistic career was still before
him. He was made an Associate of the Academy in 1814, and an
R.A. in 1823, and he exhibited there between 1788 and 1857 no less
than 244 works.1 But an unfortunate event occurred in 1848, which
cast a blot upon his reputation somewhat allied to that which has
been recorded of J. C. Nattes. He was charged with having
exhibited at the Royal Academy, and sold as his own, a picture
painted by another hand (that of a young artist named Yarnold, of
whom little is known), which he had bought at a broker's. He had
indeed added some of his own handiwcrk, so much of it in fact that
a living critic who remembers seeing it assures the writer that he
considered it ' a complete Reinagle.' But his brother Academicians
refused to admit that this had converted it into a work of his own,
and he was obliged to retire from their body. Possibly an employ-
ment wherein he had been for some time engaged had induced an
inverse habit of imitation which misguided the direction of his efforts.
He had not been trying to engraft his own characteristics upon the
works of other painters, but, on the contrary, training his hand to
assume their several manners. He was, it is said, engaged at a daily
fee by a picture dealer in Golden Square to restore old masters ; and
to have become an adept in putting in figures and cattle where re-
quired, touching up trees in Ruysdaels and Hobbemas, and to have
been equal even to the completing of a Cuyp.2 He was a skilful
copyist of Caspar Poussins in the National Gallery. He began on
1 Graves's Dictionary of Artists.
* There is a story of his having overheard from his adjoining work-room a negotiation
which ended in the purchase by Sir Robert Peel, on Lady Peel's persuasion, of a 700
278 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
a red ground, and finished the picture in a day or so.1 Reinagle was
then more than seventy years of age, but full of life and energy. He
was a man of great natural ability and intelligence, with a taste for
mechanics and inventions. Some years after he had left the Academy,
he took to discoursing upon technical art, and gave some lectures at
about half-a-crown admission in one of the show rooms of his friend
Collard, the pianoforte maker, who was fond of pictures. Some main-
tained that he had been harshly treated by the Academy, and perhaps
the opinion was held there. For a liberal allowance, made to him
from the funds of that body, was continued to his death, which event
occurred at Chelsea on the i^th of November,2 1862, at the age of
eighty-seven.
Many of his landscapes have been engraved as book illustrations.
From 1818 to 1828, and in 1830, the small pocket-book views in
Peacock's Polite Repository, engraved by John Pye, are from R. R.
Reinagle's designs. To W. B. Cooke's The Thames he supplied
three of the plates, viz. 'Richmond,' dated i Feb. 1819; ' Sion
House,' i Nov. 1821 ; 'Opening of Waterloo Bridge,' I Aug. 1822. In
the Bijou for 1828 is ' Haddon Hall ' (z\ x 3| in.), engraved after him
by R. Wallis. In Tillotson's Album of Scottish Scenery (1834?) is
' Bothwell Castle,' engraved after him by E. Finden. In J. M. W.
Turner's Views in Sussex, engraved by W. B. Cooke, 1819 (Part
i : no more published), the ' scientific and explanatory notices of
the drawings' are by R. R. Reinagle.
J. J. CHALON was not received into the Academy until long after.
He was made A.R.A. in 1827, and R.A. in 1841. In the mean time
he exhibited works there of greater interest and importance than
any he had sent to the Water-Colour Society, showing his versatility
and power in painting both landscape and genre, and giving character
to his figures as well as grouping them with skill. His works at the
Society from 1806 to 1812 numbered fifty-one, mostly studies by
the Thames or the Wye, with rustic figures to match. In 1809 he has
a view of the fire at Drury Lane Theatre, seen from Westminster
guinea Hobbema in the conversion of which he had had a hand. Sir Robert, it is added,
who was doubtful of it from the first, retained it in his gallery, though not on the line, as au
interesting specimen of clever imitation.
1 Three of his copies from the Rubenses at Antwerp were exhibited at 61 Pall Mall in
1819. See Description, 8vo. 1819. (S., K, Lib.)
* Redgrave. Ottley says ' December. '
CH.
FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 279
Bridge. He gave to Greenwich Hospital a picture of ' Napoleon on
board the Bellerophon, 1815,' and there is a large and striking oil
painting of ' Hastings ' by him at the South Kensington Museum.
A set of Twenty-four Subjects exhibiting the Costume of Paris, ' the
incidents taken from nature, designed and drawn on stone by
J. J. Chalon,' small folio, was published in 1822, the dates on the
plates being from May 1820. Most of them have a touch of humour.
Neither he nor his brother ever married, and their close com-
panionship was only severed by John's death, which took place on
the i4th of November, 1854, at the age of seventy-four, after a long
illness, commencing with a paralytic seizure in 1847. His brother
followed him in less than six years, dying at the same old house at
Campden Hill where the two had passed together the autumn of their
lives. They were regarded with much esteem, and their social
qualities made them always welcome in the high professional circle
in which they moved.
The name of the brothers Chalon must not be dismissed from
this record without a memorandum of a pleasant club of which they
are said to have been the founders, as they were for many years its
life and soul, called The Sketching Society. It was not confined to
Members of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, but the two
bodies had Members enough in common to justify our regarding the
former as in some measure an offshoot of the latter. The father of
such Societies was that accredited to Girtin, of which an account has
already been given. Rut that now spoken of was the most celebrated,
and left the most enduring visible results. Earlier meetings of the
same kind are spoken of as having taken place among the first
Members of the Water-Colour Society, even from the time of its
foundation in 1804, when 'a friendly society' is alleged to have
met ' at the house of each in rotation, there to spend the evening
in sketching, composition &c. &c.' To its meetings John Varley,
it is said, though ' not one of the original members, was always
invited, his talent as an artist, social qualities, and liberality in
imparting information to his brother artists securing him always a
welcome.' ' Sketches by Havell and Atkinson also are believed to
have been made on such occasions. Of this earlier body Cristall
was a Member, and perhaps the originator. It was dissolved
before the foundation of the more celebrated 'Sketching Society.'2
1 Art Union, Jan. 1843. * Letter from A. E. Chalon. J. J. J. MSS.
280 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. IV
Though it was popularly known by the above name, the original
title of the more celebrated club was ' The Society for the Study of
Epic and Pastoral Design.' It originated with the two Chalons, and
Francis Stevens, at whose house in Wigmore Street the first meeting
was held on the 6th of January (Twelfth Night), 1808, when the plan
of the Society was arranged. Its first members, besides the above
three, were Turner (of Oxford) and Cornelius Varley (fellow-Members
with them of the Water-Colour Society), with Thomas Webster, the
architect, above mentioned as a companion of the Varleys in Wales
in 1802, and Michael Sharp, a painter of portraits and popular
subjects of a humorous class. To these at the second meeting was
added Henry Pierce Bone, the portrait painter in enamel, above
mentioned as one of the Associated Artists in 1808, who was then
working chiefly in oil, and composing subjects from history and
poetic fiction. The number was at first limited to eight, but two or
three honorary Members were afterwards admitted, and the president
for the evening had the privilege of introducing one visitor. The
Society held weekly meetings during the winter season from October
to April. At the anniversary they indulged in a little extra merri-
ment, with toasts and speeches round a Twelfth cake, and at Mid-
summer they made an excursion together to visit ' something beautiful
in nature or art, generally in both,' winding up the day with a
dinner at Richmond or Greenwich, ' or some other country retreat.'
The ordinary meetings, on the model of Girtin's Society, were held
at each other's houses ' in rotation, the host of the evening being also
president, and giving out the subject to be treated after tea and
coffee. At eight o'clock they commenced operations, and at ten
sat down to supper, a very simple meal at first, but as their appetites
grew more fastidious it became so luxurious that laws were found
necessary to restrain it. After supper the drawings were collected
by the president, and put up separately for each member to criticize ;
and this was done with more candour and judgment than is usually
found in professional critics. The drawing remained the property
of the president of the evening (who by ancient law was not allowed
to sell or otherwise dispose of them during his life without the
consent of the Society), and thus ended a very agreeable and
not ill-spent evening.' * In accordance with the name chosen for the
1 Memoir of Thomas Uwins, R.A., \. 163, 164.
CH. iv FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 281
Society, the subjects at first were ' chiefly from the ancient classics,'
and, according to Pyne, ' the host prepared written extracts on
separate slips ' for the use of the members (whose school memories
were perhaps not always to be trusted), besides providing, as in duty
bound, 'paper strained on drawing frames, pencils, and -sepia.' l
Afterwards the scope allowed was almost unlimited. The Sketching
Society had a bright existence, and lasted for forty years. It will
be recurred to at a period of its greater fame.
One of the last drawings exhibited by WILLIAM WESTALL with
the Water-Colour Society was a view of Port Jackson (in the gallery
of 1812), doubtless that now at South Kensington with the date
1804. It forms one of the illustrations (engraved in line from his
drawings) of the two quarto volumes containing the history of the
ill-fated expedition to which he had begun life as draftsman. In the
South Kensington Catalogue it is described as ' painted in the tinted
manner, but with local colour used with opaque white sparingly
for the high lights." The book did not come out until 1814, when
it was published with the title A Voyage to Terra Australis, ' under-
taken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast
country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in his
Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel
Porpoise and Cumberland schooner : with an account of the ship-
wreck of the Porpoise, arrival of the Cumberland at Mauritius, and
imprisonment of the commander during six years and a half in
that island ; by Matthew Flinders, commander of the Investigator!
The following eminent landscape line engravers were employed
therein in reproducing Westall's designs, namely : J. Byrne, S. Middi-
man, J. Pye, L. Scott, and W. Woolnoth. Captain Flinders died in
July 1814, on the very day on which the book was published.3
Westall was also employed by the Admiralty to make pictures from
some of the views, which, being exhibited in 1812 at the Royal
Academy, attracted great attention by reason of the absolute novelty
of the subjects. In the same year he was made an Associate of the
last-named body, his short connexion with the Water-Colour Society
coming to an end at the same time.
It is, however, upon his water-colour drawings, rather than upon
his oil paintings, that his reputation rests. Even the former are
1 Somerset House Gazette, \. 35. * Fenny Cyclopizdia.
282 THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812 BK. iv
chiefly known through the medium of engravings. ' His colouring,'
says John Landseer the engraver,1 ' was chaste, and his chiaroscuro
harmonious, never flashing, or forced, or meretricious. The obtain-
ment of fleeting popularity was quite out of his way : the artist was
never obtruded before the demands of the subject : and hence
Westall's forte was rather landscape portraiture than the treatment
of ideal subjects; hence too, and from a corresponding want of critical
discrimination on the part of the public, he was not as a landscape
painter— one, besides, who had seen much more of the world than
his academical brethren — duly appreciated, although justly valued by
the judicious few." Westall's professional career had scarcely passed
its first stage when he joined and left the Water-Colour Society.
According to Graves, seventy of his works are named in the
catalogues of the Royal Academy, thirty in those of the British In-
stitution, and seven in those of the Society of British Artists, between
the years 1801 and 1849, the last of his life.
His integrity of character and unassuming manners secured him
many valuable friendships, among them that of Sir George and Lady
Beaumont, who when staying at Keswick were induced to seek him
out on observing the merit of one of his Indian sketches at a stationer's
shop there. His acquaintance with Professor Inman, astronomer to
Flinders's expedition, led indirectly to one with the Rev. Richard
Sedgwick, whose daughter Ann, the youngest sister of the eminent
geologist, Professor Adam Sedgwick, he married on the 22nd of
September, i82o.2 She died in 1862.
The incidents of travel in his youthful days seem to have quenched
any thirst for adventure that he may have possessed ; for, with one
exception, he passed the rest of his life in his own country, sketch-
ing chiefly, but not exclusively, in the fine scenery of the North of
England, with which, after all he had seen, he was much impressed ;
and working up for the engraver both home and foreign studies, to
be reproduced in popular series for many a year. The exception was
a visit to Paris in the spring of 1847, the only time, strange to say,
that he ever set foot on the continent of Europe. In the following
autumn he met with an accident, which, though not immediately
fatal, brought about his death on the 22nd of January, 1850, in his
1 See Art Journal, April 1850, p. 105.
2 The Life of Sedgwick, published in 1890, contains some landscape woodcuts and
portraits from drawings by W. Westall, made in or before the year of his marriage.
CH. iv FALL OF THE FIRST SOCIETY 283
sixty- ninth year, at St. John's Wood, where he had chiefly resided
since his marriage.
The following works (mostly named in order of date) are illustrated,
wholly or in part, by William Westall : Views of Scenery in Madeira,
the Cape, China, and India, 1811; Ackermann's History of Oxford,
1813-14 (eight of the plates); Ackermann's History of Cambridge,
1815 (twenty-one of the plates) ; Ackermann's History of Winchester,
Eton, Westminster &c., 1816 (fifteen of the plates); Cooke's Pic-
turesque Vieivs of the Southern Coast, 2 vols. folio, 1826 ('South-
ampton,' i Jan. 1814; 'Netley Abbey,' i Oct. 1816); Pyne's History
of the Royal Residences, 1819 (six of the plates) ; Views of the Caves
near Ingleton, Gordale Scar and Malham Cove in Yorkshire, 4to, 1 8 1 8
(twelve strongly shaded aquatints, 'drawn and etched by Wm. Westall,
A.R.A.') ; A Series of Views of the Abbeys and Castles in Yorkshire,
'drawn and engraved by W. Westall, A.R.A., and F. Mackenzie,1
folio, 1820, letterpress by T. D. Whitaker, LL.D. (four of the eight
aquatint plates ' ) ; Fourteen views of the Lake and Vale of Kesivick,
drawn and engraved by W. Westall, A.R.A., 4to, 1820; Britannia
Illustrata (Kent), folio, Rodwell & Martin, 1822 (two lithographs,
'Canterbury from North Lane, i Feb. 1822;' and 'The Valley of
Maidstone, looking towards Allingham, pub. Ackermann, 1823 ');
Views on the Thames at Richmond, Eton, Windsor, and Oxford,' imp.
4to, 1 824 (thirty-five large views lithographed by Hullmandel); Vieivs
in Egypt and Nubia, 4to, Murray, 1824-5, letterpress by Edw. J.
Cooper, lithographs after drawings by S. Bossi, drawn on stone by
W. Westall and J. D. Harding (those by Westall comprise land-
scape, architecture, and figures) ; Picturesque Tour of the River
Thames, twenty-four coloured aquatints and two vignettes 'from
original drawings taken on the spot by Wm. Westall and Samuel
Owen,' folio, Ackermann, 1828 (twenty are by Westall, chiefly repre-
seting gentlemen's seats below Oxford, and the bridges in London) ;
Great Britain Illustrated, ' a series of original views from drawings
by William Westall, A.R.A., engraved by and under the direction of
Edward Finden, with descriptions by Thomas Moule, 4to, Tilt, 1830'
(the views, 161 in all, are placed two on a plate, dated 1828-30;
editions dated 1832 and 1834, in two vols. 8vo, with 119 plates,
bear the prefixed title ' Landscape Album ').
To the steel-plate annuals and drawing-room books he also con-
1 The British Museum has a unique copy with three unpublished plates.
284
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY, 1805-1812
r,K iv
tributed views, of which the following is a (probably imperfect) list :
In the Forget-me-not, 1831, 'The Boa Ghaut;' 1834, 'The Hong
Merchant's Garden ' (eng. by E. Goodall). In Tillotson's Illustrations
of Byron, 3 vols. 4to, 1833-4, ' Cagliari, Sardinia ; ' ' Newstead Abbey ,'
' The Fountain at Newstead,' and ' Hucknell Church, Notts ' (vignettes
from 'Life and Works of Byron,' I2mo, Murray) ; and another' New-
stead Abbey ' (from a sketch by C. Fellows, Esq.). In Tillotson's
Album of Scottish Scenery, ' Woodstock ' (from a drawing in the
collection of George III.) and ' Nidpath Castle' (from a sketch by
F. Skene), both engraved by E. Finden. In Tillotson's New
Waverley Album, ' Windermere.' In the Keepsake for 1839, 'Byron
contemplating the Coliseum.' Plates of this kind, however, appeared
and reappeared, being made to do duty in successive publications, so
that it is not easy to trace them to the first issue. For example, a print
of the ' Fortress of Bowrie ' (from a sketch by Captain Auber) in
Emma Roberts's Hindostan, 2 vols. 4to, 1845, ma7 also be found in
Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book for 1836, itself a receptacle for
plates already published elsewhere. Westall also did some work
for the illustrated pocket-books.1
1 Dr. Percy's Sale Catalogue, Lot 1431.
BOOK V
THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY
1813-1820
CHAPTER I
A NEW SOCIETY
Reconstitution— Oil pictures, portraits, and sculpture admitted — Non-members allowed to
exhibit — Claim of continuity— Changes of personnel— An independent water-colour
exhibition— Final biographies of retiring Members— Nicholson — Gilpin — Holworthy.
IN strictness it may be insisted that by the end of the year 1812 the
original Society of Painters in Water-Colours had ceased to exist.
But the severance of its ties was not an absolute disruption. The
Members of whom it had been composed divided themselves into two
opposing factions, consisting respectively of those who favoured, and
those who dissented from, the scheme of admitting oil pictures to the
future exhibitions. The reforming party had already taken measures
to carry into effect the resolutions which they had succeeded in passing
on the 1 6th of November. For between that date and the final meet-
ing of the 3Oth, namely on the 26th of that month, the following
group had assembled at John Varley's house, in Broad Street, Golden
Square, in order to form ' a society for the purpose of establishing an
exhibition consisting of pictures in oil and water colours.' Nicholson
took the chair, and, besides him, there were present, of the original
set, Barret, Cristall, Havell, Holworthy, and John and Cornelius
Varley ; with Smith and Uwins, the Associate Fielding, and two
artists who had not hitherto joined the Society, namely James Holmes
and John Linnell. It was then and there resolved that the new body
should consist of twenty Members, and that a select number of other
artists should be specially invited to contribute to the exhibitions, but
that the gallery should not be thrown open to the profession in general.
286 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. V
At another meeting, held two days after at the same place, it was re-
solved that, ' notwithstanding the promiscuous admission of works in
oil and water colours,' it should ' always be considered a leading
principle that in the arrangement of the exhibition the two classes be
kept separate and distinct,' the centre of the room being devoted
exclusively to paintings in water-colours. It was moreover agreed,
according to a plan suggested by Glover, who had now joined the
confederacy, that the arrangement and division should be so con-
trived that the public might be compelled to pass through the water-,
colour department before conning to the pictures in oil.1
On the 3rd of December, the old Society having in the mean time
been formally dissolved, the promoters of the new one met again at
Glover's in Montagu Square, and drew up the following list of
Members, to constitute the ' Society of Painters in Oil and Water
Colours ' : —
George Barret
Joshua Cristall
David Cox
A. V. Copley Fielding
James Holworthy
John Varley
Francis Nicholson
John Linnell
John Glover
Miss Harriet Gouldsmith
William Havell
James Holmes
Cornelius Varley
William Turner
Thomas Uwins
John Smith
On the I7th Nicholson was elected President ; Smith, Secretary;
Barret, Treasurer ; and Uwins, C. Varley, Glover and Cristall were
chosen to constitute the first Committee. To the above Members were
added by election on the 4th and i8th of February, 1813, respectively,
Frederick Mackenzie and Henry Richter. The artists whose names
are in italics had not been connected with the defunct Society ; and
Fielding and Cox had been admitted thereto as Associates only, the
latter not having even exhibited in its gallery.
Atkinson, Pugin, Nash, Scott, Clennell, and C. Barber now ex-
pressed themselves as favourable to the views of the reconstituted
Society, and they all exhibited with it, though they did not join it as
Members. Heaphy, Nash, and De Wint, as well as Clennell, had been
invited to become Members ; but Heaphy held aloof altogether, and
1 Such favouring of the water-colours afterwards gave rise to complaints of injustice to the
oil. See Elmes's Annals of the Fine Arts (1820), pp. 140, 170.
CH. I A NEW SOCIETY 287
the other three contented themselves with aiding it as exhibitors
only, as did also the former Members, Miss Byrne, Dorrell, Stevens,
and Wild.
The promoters of the. new Society proceeded to draw up a set of
rules, retaining for the most part the original code, as far as it could
be applied to the new conditions. They obtained a transfer of the
intermittent lease of the Spring Gardens Gallery, took at a valuation
the plant and fittings of their predecessors, and prepared to open an
exhibition in the following spring. Invitations to contribute were
sent to several artists of repute, as well as to their old colleagues, and
the scope of the exhibition was extended so as to admit (with the oil
paintings) not only portraits and miniatures, but a few designs in
sculpture. Non-members were, as before, nominally restricted to five
works apiece, but the number was afterwards extended to eight.
Twenty-nine non-members co-operated with the eighteen Members,
making forty-seven exhibitors in all ; and the number of works brought
together was 250 of all kinds, the great majority being still by artists
who had earned their chief celebrity as painters in water-colours.
Although the original Society had in reality been dissolved, it
seems to have been the policy of the new one, by clothing itself as
far as possible with the same external aspect, to hide the breach of
continuity which had in fact occurred. The words ' oil and ' are
prefixed to those of ' water colours ' on the title-page of the catalogue ;
but in typographical details and general appearance it is similar to
those which had gone before it, and the exhibition of 1813 is boldly
numbered as ' The Ninth.' Moreover, an advertisement is there
inserted, in the following words, which will not bear a close com-
parison with the records contained in the minute-books, from which
chiefly the foregoing account has been compiled : ' THE SOCIETY OF
PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS stimulated by Public Encourage-
ment, and gaining Confidence from Success, have ventured this year
on a considerable extension of their Plan. Pictures in Oil and in
Water Colours, Portraits, Models, and Miniatures are admitted into
the present Exhibition ; and should these increased efforts receive
from the Public that liberal support which has always accompanied
the former exertions of this Society, every Year may produce fresh
sources of Amusement, and each succeeding Exhibition become more
worthy of Approbation and Patronage.' Notwithstanding the proposed
contrivances to ensure the prominence of the water-colour drawings,
288 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813 1820 UK. v
and their due presentation to an eye unfatigued with the glare of oil,
there is no distinction at all in the catalogues between the two classes,
so that it is impossible to tell therefrom in which material any given
work was painted.1
Under the above conditions, exhibitions were held for the next
eight years, 1813 to 1820, in this 'great room' at Spring Gardens.
They constitute the second period, upon which we now enter, in the
annals of our present history. It will be narrated how, at the close of
that period, the Society reverted to the original scheme, and became
once more a body of painters in water-colours only.
The following further changes in the personnel of the Society took
place before the close of the first year. Nicholson, notwithstanding the
prominent part he had taken in forming and inaugurating the new
Society, tendered his resignation in the November of 1813, and sent
nothing to the exhibition of the following year. He was, however,
specially permitted to exhibit as a ' Member ' in 1815, after which year
his name disappears from the catalogues. Richter, too, threw up his
Membership in December 1813, but gave help for some time after
as an occasional Exhibitor, and eventually, as we shall see, rejoined
the Society. Two new Members, however, were elected in the same
month, namely, George Fennel Robson, and the former President of
1805, William Sawrey Gilpin. But the latter name is attached to
five drawings only in 1814, with 'no effects' in 1815, and then dis-
appears altogether.
There was a rule (not always strictly enforced) that every Member
should contribute one work at least to each exhibition. In 1814,
Holworthy, having failed to do so, was called upon to explain, and
thereupon resigned. In the catalogue for the same year we find the
name of William Havell transferred from the list of Members to that
of Exhibitors. After 1816 it is not to be found again for a long
series of years. In 1827 he returned to the Society for a short period.
But Nicholson, Gilpin, and Holworthy were leaving, or shortly to
leave, it for good and all.
We are left in the dark as to the circumstances of Nicholson's
retirement, and it is somewhat of a surprise to come upon his name
in a group of separatists from the body of his old colleagues. It
seems that, after the abandonment by the original Society of their
1 In 1813, Glover, Hills, Turner, Havell, and J. Varlcy had oil pictures. (Papworth
MS.) In 1818 about half were in oils. (Literary Gaset/c.)
CH. I A NEW SOCIETY 289
attempt to maintain an exclusive exhibition of water-colour drawings,
an independent effort was made to set on foot an annual gathering of
the kind; and with this view a gallery was opened 'at the Public
Room, New Bond Street' (No. 23), in 1814, with an exhibition
of 193 ' Paintings in Water-Colours,' which the promoters declared
to be ' unconnected with any Society or Establishment whatever.'
Several of the old Society's Members (including its Presidents for
1813 and 1814) were among the contributors. F. Nicholson had
21 works, F. Nash II, 5. Rigaud 9, and J. Smith 3. Some, whose
names had been included with the 'Associated Artists' in 1808,
were also of the number. A second exhibition opened there in
1815, on the 3rd of May, with 205 works, including 3 by Nicholson,
3 by Nash, and 4 by Wild. Several artists who had yet to win
their spurs as Members of our own Society, were contributors to
these exhibitions.1 But it was the same old story. Already it was
found necessary to eke out the attraction by admitting some oil
paintings, together with a few ' old masters ; ' and we hear nothing
more of the venture.2
FRANCIS NICHOLSON, at the time of his retirement, had exhibited
277 works on the Society's walls, in numbers varying from 13 (in
1815 3) to 41 (in 1809); having been absent but one season, that of
1814. The subjects embraced views among the mountains and lakes
of Wales and Scotland, Yorkshire abbeys, Chedder rocks, and hills
and vales of Lynton and Lynmouth ; with a shipwreck or two at
Scarborough, and, latterly, a few foreign views, done from sketches by
amateurs. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart. ; Sir Richard Colt
Hoare, Bart., and John Thornton, Esq., supplied some of these,
Nicholson's original study of nature, like that of most of his brother
landscape painters in the war-time, having been confined to his own
well-stored country. There are two Irish views in 1812 and 1813,
from sketches by Sir Thomas Gage, Bart. The artist himself is not
known to have been in Ireland ; but his son Alfred, who, after serving
in the navy, followed his father's profession as a water-colour painter
1 Samuel Prout had 10 works in 1814, and 18 in 1815. To the first exhibition
G. F. Rohson contributed 2 ; and in the second J. D. Harding\\a& 5, and H. Gastineau 4.
* Catalogues of the two exhibitions are preserved in the Library at the South Kensington
Museum under the William Smith bequest.
* As one (and one only) of these thirteen works is described in the catalogue as ' painted
in water-colours,' it is to be inferred that the remaining twelve were in oil.
U
290 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. v
and teacher of drawing, made many sketches in the Emerald Isle,
during a residence there of three or four years commencing in i8i3.1
John Landseer, writing in 1808, observes of our painter's art :
' Mr. Nicholson generally chooses to paint romantic rocks and water-
falls and lake scenery, of which there are several pictures in the
present Exhibition, and in our opinion his generalized style is far
better suited to such subjects than to subjects where (as in Gothic
architecture) portraiture in detail is more imperiously required.' 2
Pyne, writing in 1823, records, in words before quoted, his ob-
servations on the influence of Nicholson's drawings upon the landscape
school of his day, when the results of his new technical processes
came to be displayed. And the critic adds that although each
professor ' continued to pursue his own particular style, yet the ex-
ample of such works, exhibiting, as they did, powers and capacities
in the materials with which they were wrought, that had been de-
veloped by ' Nicholson ' alone, acted as a stimulus to their exertions.' 3
Nicholson himself was fond of strong, bold effects of light and shade.
He considered Claude's gradation of light ' tame and almost insipid,'
preferring the sudden gleams, or ' accidents ' as he called them, of
G. Poussin, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Wilson. The chiaroscuro of
Reynolds, Wilson, Barret, and Gainsborough, was, in his opinion,
carried, in principle and practice, to a greater degree of perfection
than was ever attained by the Venetian painters. These views ap-
pear in an elaborate treatise on his art, which he published after
ceasing to be a Member of our Society, under the following title :
Tlie Practice of Drawing and Painting Landscape from Nature in Water-
Colours, ' exemplified in a series of instructions calculated to facilitate
the progress of the learner, including the elements of Perspective,
their application in sketching from nature, the explanation of various
processes of colouring, for producing from the outline a finished pic-
ture, with observations on the study of nature, and various other
matters relating to the Arts. By Francis Nicholson. London, 1820.'
The author dedicated his book to the Hon. Mrs. Fortescue, with a
compliment to her proficiency in art, and thanks for ' numerous
favours and acts of kindness from her and her family.' So he was
still in the enjoyment of high patronage among amateurs of the
brush.
1 Redgrave's Dictionary. * Review of Publications in Art, p. 199.
3 Somerset House Gazette, i. 30, 31.
CH. I A NEW SOCIETY 291
With the exception of eighteen, noted by Graves between 1789 and
1833 at other galleries, Nicholson confined the exhibition of his
works to that of the Water-Colour Society. But he continued to
teach, by example as well as by precept. His treatise passed quickly
through several and enlarged editions ; and he took advantage of the
newly invented process of lithography to put a large number of
drawings, several hundred it is said, upon stone, which, serving as
' copies ' for students, have been thumbed and torn and worn away
like old school books, and consequently become rare. Among his
views so executed are eighty-one large lithographs from Sketches of
British Scenery, obi. folio, 1821, and Six Views of Scarborough, imp.
folio, 1822.
Besides the earlier ones already mentioned, engravings after
Nicholson's drawings may be found in the following works : Tn the
Beauties of England and Wales are ' Porchester Castle,' 1 805 ; two
views of ' Netley Abbey,' 1805, 1806, both from sketches by Dayes ;
'St. Vincent's Rocks, near Clifton,' 1806, and ' Prudhoe Castle,1 1811.
In Havell's aquatints of Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Seats is ' Pan-
theon, Stourhead Gardens' (Mr. Colt Hoare), 1817. In the Northern
Cambrian Mountains, folio, 1820, are 'Rhaiadyr y Wennol ' (No. 31)
and ' Denbigh Castle ' (No. 36), both highly coloured aquatints, by
T. Fielding, I May, 1820. In Facsimiles of Water-Colour Drawings,
published by Bowyer, 1825, are 'Robin Hood's Bay1 (PI. 4), 'Ship-
wreck near Scarborough ' (PI. 7), ' Dropping Well, Knaresborough '
(PI. 9).
' Eminent as was his position as an artist,' says Ottley, ' he was
also distinguished for his practical knowledge in mechanics, music,
optics, chemistry, which led him often to try experiments, often
highly interesting in their result. It was his practice to paint upon
unbleached paper, and to use water-colours, the durability of which
his experience had established. Some of his experimental drawings
after thirty or forty years' probation remained as fresh and full in
colour as when they were first executed.' '
The latter years of Nicholson's life present an agreeable picture
of ease and enjoyment of a competency acquired by successful
industry. Long retired from professional practice, he continued to
use the pencil for his own pleasure, and to amuse himself with his
trials of colours and vehicles. He had had the satisfaction of seeing
1 Supplement to Bryan's Dictionary of Painters &>c. (1876).
U 2
292 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. v
some at least of his talent inherited in another generation. But the
picture is saddened by the death in 1833, after a painful illness, of the
son already mentioned. A daughter exhibited two Scotch land-
scapes at Spring Gardens in 1815 ; and another son appears to have
been the draftsman of two series of lithographs entitled respectively,
Six Views of Picturesque Scenery in Goathland, folio, 10 Oct. 1821 ;
and Six Views of Picturesque Scenery in Yorkshire, 10 Sep. 1822,
published at Malton.1
Nicholson continued to reside in Upper Titchfield Street till 1806,
from which date till 1810 his address is i Great Chesterfield Street,
Marylebone. In 1811 he moves to 52 Charlotte Street, Portland
Place, where he continued to reside until his death there on the 6th
of March, 1844, at the ripe age of fourscore and ten. From internal
evidence, the autobiographical notes so largely quoted from in an
earlier part of this history appear to have been written during the
last five years of his life. They would thus indicate a remarkable
retention of memory.
The highest price recorded by Mr. Redford in his Art Sales for
one of Nicholson's drawings is ioi/. i?s. for a 'Stirling Castle'
(13 x 1 8 in.), painted in 1806, and sold in 1869 at that price.
Of WILLIAM SAWREY GILPIN there is little more to relate. He
exhibited in all eighty-three works with the Society, including five in
1815, in annual numbers of from three (in 1809) to twenty (in 1805)
during his membership. In his post of drawing master at the
Military College he was transferred with the college from Great
Marlow to Sandhurst, where he was residing in 1814 and 1815.
Except a few early sketches at the Lakes of Killarney, his subjects
are chiefly confined to ordinary views about his home on the Thames,
and in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, with a
few about Cheltenham and in Glamorganshire. After leaving the
Society he devoted himself to the art of landscape gardening, both
in its theory and practice, and ' obtained almost a monopoly ' therein.
' His principal works were in Ireland at Crum Castle, Enniskillen
Castle, and the seats of Lord Cawdor and Lord Blayney ; in England
he laid out the gardens of Dansfield, near Henley-on-Thames, and at
Sir E. Kerrison's seat near Hoxne, Suffolk.' 2 He moreover published
1 See Dr. Percy's MS. Catalogue.
2 Dictionary of National Biography.
CH. I A NEW SOCIETY 293
a volume entitled Practical Hints upon Landscape Gardening ; witli
some Remarks on Domestic Architecture, as connected with Scenery, 8vo,
London, 1832, with lithographic illustrations. He married Elizabeth
Paddock, by whom he left two sons. His death, at the age of eighty-
one, occurred in 1 843, at Sedbury Park, in Yorkshire.
JAMES HOLWORTHY had not been a large exhibitor. His name
had appeared in each year's catalogue, but the total number of the
works to which it is appended is only twenty-nine. They represent
picturesque stock subjects in England and Wales, ruined castles pre-
dominating. Redgrave says that he continued to practise in London
up to 1822. On the i5th of October, 1821,' he married, at Hastings,
Miss Anne Wright, an artist daughter of Richard Wright, M.D., who
was an elder brother of the painter Joseph Wright, commonly called
' Wright of Derby.' He then retired into the country, having pur-
chased some property called the Brookfield estate, near Hathersage, in
the county of Derby, where he built Brookfield House. There was
no issue of the marriage, which was severed by his death on the loth
of June, 1841, followed in the next year by that of his widow. His
grave is at Kensal Green.2
1 Redgrave assigns the date 1824 to Ihis event.
* See The Life and Works of Wright of Derby, by William Bemrose, folio (1885), p. 4.
294 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 KK. v
CHAPTER II
MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY
Retrospect in 1820— Further biographies of old Members — Havell — Pocock—J. Smith —
Barret— Cristall—Glmier— Hills.
THE reader being reminded of the division of this history, so far,
into two periods of eight years, the first from 1 805 to 1812, when the
annual exhibitions were confined to paintings or drawings in water-
colours ; the second from 1813 to 1820, when oil pictures and other
works of art were admitted also, and of the fact above stated, that at
the end of the second period the Society reverted to the scheme
adopted during the first ; and a more detailed account being for the
present deferred of the circumstances which led to and attended this
reform ; the last-mentioned date will now be taken as a convenient
standpoint from which to cast a retrospective glance at the pro-
ceedings of the Society, and the doings of its Members and other
Exhibitors, to that epoch.
In this year 1820, Pocock was seventy-nine, and 'Warwick'
Smith seventy-one. Barret, Cristall, and Glover were each fifty-three
years old, and Hills was fifty-one. John Varley was forty-two ;
Pugin and Dorrell were nearly as old ; and Wild, Nash, and Uwins
followed at about thirty-eight. Then came a younger and rising
race of artists, some of them not hitherto mentioned. De Wint, Cox,
and Prout were about six years younger than Varley ; and Fielding,
Robson, and Turner, younger again by a somewhat shorter interval,
the last-named being thirty-one. Three years before this, Pocock
had finally ceased to exhibit, and Glover had abandoned the Society,
under circumstances yet to be related. Uwins, too, had retired the
year after, and Dorrell's name had appeared for the last time in the
catalogue, in 1819. Havell, as aforesaid, had given up his member-
ship in 1813, and exhibited nothing since 1816. The biographies of
these first Members have now to be continued to the epochs named.
CH. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 295
WILLIAM HAVELL had not now taken his final leave ; but the
Society was in another phase of its history when he afterwards re-
joined it. Since he had been received as one of its first Members, he
had not only justified his position by the quality of his contributions,
but had taken a place in the leading rank as an artist in landscape.
His compositions, says Pyne, ' were much admired even in the first
year's exhibition in Brook Street, whilst he was yet a very young
man. He had already proved himself an attentive observer of nature
for his landscape subjects were well chosen, and truly characteristic
of English scenery. . . . Havell, however, was not contented with an
occasional trip from London, to snatch a new hint, by hasty sketching
from real scenes, to work into pictures at his return, as many had done :
he wisely determined to remove to some picturesque spot, where he
might sojourn awhile, and at leisure contemplate nature under the
changes of each season, and attired in all the varieties of her rich
wardrobe. He selected the beautiful region of the lakes in Cumber-
land, and took up his quarters in a little town in the very bosom of
romantic nature. . . . Here he studied for two years, when he returned
to London with rich stores of lake and mountain scenery, from which
for several seasons, he enriched the exhibition, added to his own fame,
and contributed to raise the general reputation of his department of
art.' It was in 1807 that he thus went to Westmoreland, to reside
for more than a year in a cottage at Ambleside. 'We remember,
among these Cumberland views,' continues his old friend and colleague,
' some which were remarkable for depth and harmony of effect, and
nearer to reality than the compositions of any of his compeers.
Indeed, the richness and intensity of colouring in some of his
happiest works suffered but little in comparison with paintings in
oil, a consequence that resulted from his continual practice of paint-
ing his effects on the spot. These drawings, though broad in effect
and bold in execution, yet were highly wrought, being the result of
careful study and much labour,' and possessed qualities of richness
and harmony ' only to be effected by reiterated touching, tinting,
and glazing.' '
Between 1805 and 1812 Havell exhibited 114 drawings at the old
Society; and at Spring Gardens in 1813-16 he had twenty-two
works, one or more of which were in oil, making 136 in all. After
the first year or two, his views in Wales are gradually superseded by
1 Somerset ffousi Gazette, i. 193.
296 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 EK. V
those at the English Lakes ; which, alternating with scenes on the
Thames, chiefly about Cavcrsham and Henley, and his native town of
Reading, interspersed with a few rustic figure groups; form nearly all the
subjects of his pencil during this period. Some of these treatments
of home subjects in his early time are perpetuated in A Series oj
Picturesque Views of the River Thames ' from the Drawings of Williar
Havell ; Dedicated to the Commissioners of the Thames Navigation,
by their humble servant Robert Havell.' Published i May, 1812.
It contains twelve coloured aquatint plates (14 x 20 in.) and a vignette
of the source, engraved by R. and D. Havell.
Two or three exhibited studies of sea-boats and fishermen, and
view of the castle, in 1812-13, tell of a sojourn at Hastings, where
married sister resided, and where he sketched with David Cox in the
former of those years. Havell was then, says Cox's biographer,
' beginning to turn his attention to oils.' '
Of his success in that material we have the recorded opinion of
Uwins, who, in describing to a friend the exhibition of 1815, wrote
thus of one of his pictures, which, strange to say, was rejected by the
Directors of the British Institution : ' There is one thing which will
excite a great bustle among artists and amateurs, it is a most extra-
ordinary picture of Havell's, in which he has painted sunshine so near to
truth that it absolutely makes the eyes ache to look at it. The artists
are all alarmed, and the patrons stand aghast ; but Havell, strong in
the power of genius, goes on in spite of all the world combined." *
The picture was, doubtless, one of ' Walnut-gathering at Petersham,
near Richmond, Surrey,' of which the painter is said to have been
very proud, considering that it even surpassed the work of Turner.
During his last five years in England, Havell had been engaged
in furnishing a series of small landscape designs, drawn for the most
part in sepia, for the frontispieces and monthly headings of the pages of
a little annual pocket-book, known as ' Peacock's Polite Repository!
For a long course of years the execution of the plates for this and
similar works 3 gave constant employment to the talent of the late
John Pye, the eminent landscape engraver. A collection of more
than 1,300 fine proof impressions of plates of this class, exquisitely
1 Solly's Life of Cox, pp. 25, 26. The writer says that Cox ' used to boast that he painted
a sunri?e in June, and then awoke his friend by flinging pebbles at his window to show what
he had done while the other slept.'
2 Memoir of Uivins, i. 37, 38.
' There are one or more after Havell in the Royal Repository, published by Suttaby.
CH. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 297
engraved by him or under his direction, was in 1882 presented by
his daughter to the British Museum, where they may be studied with
much profit. None among them are more beautiful than those
designed by William Havell. When that artist left England, after
supplying the volumes for the years 1813 to 1817, the pencil of
Reinagle was, as before mentioned, employed for some years, in fact
until Havell's return in 1829. Often, in these miniature topographical
prints, Pye, to use his own homely expression when speaking of the
engraver's task of so translating an inartistic sketch as to make it
presentable to the eye, had ' to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.'
But this was not the case with the designs of his ' old friend William
Havell.' Havell, like Pye, was a devoted admirer of Turner. ' The
knowledge,' said he, ' which Girtin and Turner had acquired of sun-
light was so completely developed in their works, that it seemed to
have been held in hand, and thrown into the subject at pleasure.'
And sometimes in their joint management of the chiaroscuro of these
pocket landscapes the two devotees scarcely fall short of the great
object of their common admiration.
To this period belong also some contributions by William Havell
to a set of coloured aquatints engraved by Robert Havell, entitled
Picturesque Views and characteristic Scenery of British Villas, ' in
imitation of drawings of views of the principal Palaces, Noblemen's
Mansions, and Gentlemen's Seats throughout Great Britain ' (Colnaghi
& Co.). This work was managed by Britton.1 In Cooke's Picturesque
Views on the South Coast there is a plate of ' Hastings,' dated 1816,
after a drawing by Havell now at the South Kensington Museum.
NICHOLAS POCOCK, though he would not remain a Member in the
new regime, had sent drawings annually to the mixed exhibition
until 1817, in which year his address is entered in the catalogue as
No. 36 St. James's Parade, Bath, instead of the old familiar residence
in George Street, Hanover Square, where he had remained since he
there played his part in the creation of the old Society. After the
last-mentioned date, his name appears no more.
He had continued to illustrate his countiy's naval annals ; some
of the drawings of his latest years depicting scenes in the renewed
1 Elmes's Annals of the Fine Arts (1816). Other artists were employed on the work
when William Havell went abroad. It then appeared as Picturesqtte Views of Noblemen's and
Gentleme-fs Seals, 1823, aquatinted by R. Havell and son, wherein five of the plates are
after W. Havell.
298 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 UK. v
sea-struggle with France, .and latterly with the American navy.
This blood-stained chapter of European history had at length closed.
And Pocock, in his last year of exhibiting, ends a list of 182 works
by depicting a calm at Broadstairs, with three other scenes on his
native shore, in none of which is there an enemy to be seen, save
' winter and rough weather.' He himself was very soon to leave this
mortal scene.
Besides these works, he had exhibited 1 13 at the Royal Academy
and 25 at the British Institution, making 320 in all. There are two
of his sea-fights at Hampton Court, and one is at Greenwich Hospital ;
but these are oil pictures. Many of his marine subjects have been
engraved ; and he designed the illustrations to Miller's edition of
Falconer's Shipwreck, 8vo, 1811. These are engraved by Fittler,
and comprise four full plates and six vignettes.
Old ' Warwick ' SMITH had been a constant exhibitor since he
first had courage to come into the field in 1807 ; though it was said
that, as in Gilpin's case, the competition to which his drawings were
so exposed had not increased his fame as an artist. In earlier days,
when they were a novelty, their colouring had astonished the public,
and fascinated all who saw them.1
' But,' writes Nicholson,2 ' the case was greatly altered on the
appearance of his works in Brook Street by comparison with others.
Francia the artist said to me, " These cannot be by the Smith who
has so high a reputation." I assured him they were by no other.
It was ill for him when the public expressed the same surprise as
Francia had done. He could not alter his method of practice, and
probably thought it beneath him to do so, or go on like others in the
endeavour to give strength of effect and depth of colour. He stood
still, and was soon left behind.' Thus we hear little of his works as
adding to the attractions of the gallery. Nevertheless he had had 142
there in all, varying in annual number from two to twenty-four. We
have scarcely any information about him except what may be learnt
from catalogues. From these we gather that for the first two or three
years his stock of Italian sketches had afforded him ample material,
but that, being debarred .during the war time, like our other artists,
from renewing that stock by further trips abroad, he followed their
1 Letter from Joseph Farington, R.A., to Colonel Machell, quoted by Nicholson,
J. J. J. MSS. * J. J. J. MSS.
CH. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 299
example by sketching in his native land. In 1 8 IO, only two out of his
fourteen drawings are from Italy. North Wales subjects are numerous,
appearing nearly every year. By 1 8 1 1 he has been in Devon and
Somerset, painting at Clovelly and about Exmoor. It is evident,
however, that he took the earliest opportunity to renew his acquaint-
ance with foreign scenes when the Continent was reopened to travellers.
In 1814 his views are all again from Italy or from Switzerland and
France.1 But they probably had not the freshness and originality of
the sketches he made while touring as a young man in the last
century with the Earl of Warwick. After the last-mentioned date,
his annual exhibits are nearly all foreign views. He was, however,
getting old and less active, and they drop to an average of five.
Smith had taken a leading part in the Society's affairs ; had been
President in 1814, 1817, and 1818 ; Secretary in 1816 ; and Treasurer
in 1819. He had resided at 7 St. George's Row, Oxford Turnpike,
till 1814 ; and from 1815 had been at 25 Bryanston Street, Portman
Square.
An Exhibitor in 1816, 1819, and 1820, named G. or G. W. Smith,
also gave the latter address, and sent eleven views in all, chiefly fiom
France and Switzerland.
The ways of GEORGE BARRET were so unassuming, and his life
had been so quietly industrious, that his name has not come before
us so often or so conspicuously as it deserves. Nevertheless he was
a representative man among the old water-colour painters. The
series of unpretending views on the Thames and in the home counties,
with a few in Wales, which he had exhibited year by' year since the
founding of the Society, showed that the ' painter's feeling ' within him
(wherein he declared everything lay) 2 was based on a deep sense of
the daily beauty of nature, and the restful light that shines with
impartial ray on homely, as on the most romantic, scenes. He had
continued, as indeed he did to the end, to wrestle with poverty ; but,
while working thriftily to support a wife and family, he ever thought
more of putting gold into his drawings, than of the amount of the
1 Among them are two views of Elba, the place of Bonaparte's short banishment ; and
the catalogue for 1814 advertizes as ' in the press,' Tht Journal of a Tour through the Island
of Elba, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. Illustrated by a selection of views engraved in
the line manner, from drawings by John Smith, who resided some time on the Island.'
(Royal 410, 8 prints, 6x9 inches.)
! Century of Painters, i. 491.
300 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. v
precious metal for which those drawings might be exchanged. He
had continued to reside in the same suburban quarter (from 1805 to
1809 at 20 Lisson Green, and then at ' 17 Devonshire Place,1 near
Paddington Green ') ; and the subjects of his later exhibited works
seemed to show that his sketching-ground was narrower than it had
been. Scenes from Wales become less common, and there is a
growing tendency to take the effect itself as his motive rather than
the local subject treated thereunder. The titles ' Morning,' ' Evening,"
' Moonlight,' ' Storm breaking off,' and the like, indicate the approach
of a period of his art which comprised some of his finest works of
this kind. But it was not necessary for him to travel far in search of
effects. It was no doubt his own experience that prompted him,
when, in a practical work on painting which he published a few years
before his death, he advised students to watch the sunsets over the
Paddington Canal from the bridge at Maida Hill. Possibly the two
drawings in 1820, to which lines from Thomson are appended in
the catalogue, called ' Evening ' and ' The Harvest Moon,' may both
have been executed in performance of the conditions of the year's
premium allotted to him as hereinafter to be mentioned. The
number of his works in the galleries since 1805 had been 198, the
average being about a dozen a year.
Some of JOSHUA CRISTALL'S lines of life still ran parallel to those
of Barret. Neither could ever do much more than make both ends
meet by following a class of art in which chaste and somewhat ideal
sentiment was the pervading motive, however much their works may
have been admired by cognoscenti. They had been neighbours in
Paddington, whither the former had come to reside in 1810 or 1811.
He, too, was married,2 but had no family. His wife, whose maiden
name was Cozens, had led a life not devoid of adventure. She was
partly brought up in France, having in her girlhood exchanged places
1 Devonshire Place appears to have been at Maida Hill, forming part of the Edgware
Road, in which Barret's house was numbered 162 in 1831. From 1836 the address took
the form ' 162 Devonshire Place, Edgeware Road, Paddington.' The numbers are now again
altered.
2 Mrs. M'Ketchnie in her MS. supplies the following bit of gossip. She says : ' He had
several times thought of marrying, and went so far with one lady, a Miss Trotter, who kept
a school, that he even took apartments in the Strand, furnished them, and then changed his
mind ! The lady threatened an action ; they compromised ; he gave her the furniture and
5o/. , which sum he did not then possess. His long-tried friends the Lacklans again helped
him in this trouble. She afterwards married a doctor and kept her carriage, but did not live
long to enjoy it.'
CH. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 301
with a young French lady, whom her own family received in England,
while she went to dwell in that of a French Marquis at the other's
home. There she was caught in a wave of the Revolution, and thence
carried off and detained for some time in durance vile ; and on her
release, she had to make her way home as best she could from the
then deserted chateau of her yet more unfortunate host.
Mr. and Mrs. Cristall's marriage took place in the summer of 1812.'
Cristall had then been residing for about two years at Maida Hill,
Kdgware Road. Now he removed to the Manor House, Paddington
Green-, the residence of his wife's aunt, who kept a large school
there, and by whom Miss Cozens had been brought up, when left an
orphan in early life.2 After this date we find for several years so
many views on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, that one may
hazard a conjecture that this was one of his favourite resorts. And
we know he had a good friend and patron there in Mr. James Vine of
Puckester, a Russian merchant, who possessed many of his drawings.
The Cristalls are said to have paid a visit to Paris, possibly in
1814 or 1815 ; but the gallery catalogues contain no evidence of
travel beyond our artist's native shore. Mrs. M'Ketchnie writes :
' He went to Scotland about 1815, I think. He had great enjoyment
in this tour. The Scotch peasantry he found to possess so much of
the Grecian elegance and costume.'3 From 1816 his address changes
to No. 2 (Lower) Lisson Street, New Road, Marylebone ; and there
he was living and painting and taking pupils in 1820. A few classi-
cal compositions for their use were, it is said, published by him at
Lisson Street with the date i8i6.4
But the titles in the gallery lists foreshadow a change which was
shortly to take place in his habits of life. Views on the Wye are
mingled with those in the Isle of Wight ; and, after sending a single
portrait in 1816, and another in i8i9,he presents us with no less than
four in 1820. It was, indeed, neither as a master of landscape, poetic
as his treatment thereof always was, nor of portraiture, that he stood
1 The above account is that given to Mr. Jenkins by Miss E. Cristall, 20 May, 1851. It
mainly agrees with that of Messrs. Redgrave in Century of Painters, i. 511, except that they
date the marriage a year later. Mr. Tregellas, in the Dictionary of National Biography,
says that Cristall married ' an accomplished French widow (a Mrs. Cousins), a lady of some
fortune.'
2 Century of Painters, \. 511.
1 There is a sketch in the Scottish National Gallery inscribe;! 'J. C. 1818. Loch
Katerine.' No. 214.
1 Dictionary of National Biography. ,
303 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. v
on his own peculiar ground. It was as a figure painter of pure classic
taste that he has been introduced to the reader ; and this character
he had maintained, less perhaps in subjects taken directly from the
mythology of the Greeks and Romans, than by developing a style of
treatment of rustic figures in real life, which contrived to elevate
the subject without an addition of false sentiment, and out of the
picturesque to evolve the beautiful. Among the 209 works which he
sent to our gallery between 1805 and 1820, a large proportion are
single studies of the class last above mentioned, of fisher folk, cottage
maidens, shepherds and gleaners, and girls at the well. ' Simplicity
of character,' writes Pyne in 1814, 'united with grandeur of style,
distinguish these designs.' ' The classic feeling which runs through
all Cristall's work is well illustrated by the following comparison a
few years later in a contemporary review : ' Poussin found the sculp-
ture of the ancients more beautiful and grand than what he could see
in nature. He therefore in too many instances painted sculptiire.
Cristall learned to see nature in the same point of view in which the
ancients contemplated her.' *
Sometimes a composition of figures, such as the ' Hastings Fish
Market ' (possibly that now at South Kensington) and ' Boats putting
off to a Vessel in Distress,' both exhibited in 1808, excited special
attention. The latter picture seems to be the same that was bought
by the Duke of Argyll for ioo/., probably that referred to by the
Messrs. Redgrave as ' A Shipwreck at Hastings,' which they tell us
was seized for a debt when in the hands of an engraver, poor Cristall
having afterwards to redeem it at a heavy cost, offending his noble
patron meanwhile by the delay.3 The figures in these subjects were
studied some years before, during a sojourn at Hastings prescribed
to him for an attack of nervous debility.4
Since the first three years. (1805 to 1807) he had not exhibited
more than half a dozen purely classic subject pieces. They did not
pay ; and it was doubtless under the incitement of the premium
before mentioned that he painted the more important work exhibited
1 Preface to Etchings of Rustic Figures. 2 Magazine of the Fine Arts, i. (1821).
3 See Century of Painters, i. 510. Dorrell gave Mr. Jenkins the following account of
this transaction. ' Mr. Cristall,' he said, ' was advised to have the picture engraved on a large
scale, which advice he adopted, and advanced go/, on the engraver's producing an unfinished
proof ; but, unfortunately for himself and the public, the plate was never finished, nor could
Mr. C. ever gain possession of it or get the money refunded."
• Mrs. M'Ketchnie'sMS.
CH. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 303
in 1820, with the title, ' Jupiter nursed in the Isle of Crete by the
Nymphs and Corybantes.' An outline etched by George Cooke, of
this composition of fourteen figures, is in the Magazine of the Fine
Arts(i82i).1
One or more of his contributions had been oil pictures, but he was
not so successful in that material as in water-colours.2 Pyne, writing
in 1824, says that 'late in his career' Cristall 'attempted painting in
oil,' but that, ' to stand up to a great work ' was beyond his ' bodily
strength,' and he was without the ' mastery over the material and the
manual execution ' only to be acquired in a long and arduous appren-
ticeship.3
JOHN GLOVER, from the first exhibition of 1805 to the last to
which he contributed, that of 1817, had sent 290 works to the gal-
leries, of which number 102 had been in the mixed exhibitions, and
the remaining 188 in the first water-colour period, 1805 to 1812. His
prolific brush had never been wanting at the annual shows. But at
the time when the original Society came to an end he had been rather
deeply bitten with the desire, which seems to have infected many of
the water-colour school in these days of its wavering, to achieve suc-
cess as a painter in oil. It has even been said that the determination
to admit oil pictures to the gallery at Spring Gardens in 1813 was due
to Glover's later practice having been chiefly in that material. This
does not, however, appear to have been the cause of his retirement,
the circumstances whereof will be related in a future chapter. Nor did
he attain much mastery over oils, with the difficulties of which, accord-
ing to Pyne, he was unable successfully to contend ; his pictures
therein being ' deficient in handling and execution,' however ' happy in
arrangement and effect.' * ' Glover has tumbled into oil,' said Shee to
Constable, at the Academy, where there was no very friendly feeling
towards the draftsman-painter. ' His oil pictures,' says Redgrave, ' are
less satisfactory than his water-colour, and have not improved with
age, but appear smooth and painty.'5 It is as usual impossible, except
in a few instances, to say which of his contributions to the Spring
Gardens rooms were in the one or the other medium. Many of his
pictures do not profess to represent particular scenes. Where they do,
1 This subject was repeated by him in 1833 and 1847.
* See Elmes's Annals of the fine Arts (1817).
1 Somerset House Gazette, i. 195. * Ibid. ii. 82.
* Dictionary of the English School.
304 THE OIL AND WATER COLOUR SOCIETY, 1813-1820 BK. v
the subjects suffice to give some indication of his favourite haunts
for sketching purposes. Views in the English Lake district arc largely
present throughout, with scarcely a year's intermission. In 1808, a
large proportion of subjects from South, and in 1 809 from North Wales,
point back to foregoing visits to these picturesque resorts, and in 1814
a similar preponderance of views of Matlock show a recent sojourn
there. But if so, these were not first visits, for among his drawings at
the Royal Academy in 1801 and 1803 had been some from all three
localities. Except a view of Mount Olympus in 1813, doubtless
from a sketch by some other hand, his subjects are all from Great
Britain; until 1815, when we find among his eighteen pictures (or
drawings) a view on the Rhine, which he calls ' Drackenfeldts and
Gotesberg Castles."
Whatever may have been its quality, the appearance of this
exhibit may be considered as marking an epoch in the Society's
annals. For the year 1815 was an era in the history of our school
of landscape, as it was in that of the politics of Europe and its alterna-
tions of war and peace. From that time forth the Continent became
again an open field of study to our landscape painters ; and, slowly
at first, though afterwards with rapid increase, this extended liberty
in the choice of subjects began to show itself in the annual exhibi-
tions. Gradually, but surely, the influence of these new conditions
affected the character of their art. This view of Glover's is thus re-
markable as being apparently the first direct result, in our series of
exhibitions, of an artist's trip across the Channel after the close of the
long war, during which our landscape sketchers had been confined to
home subjects. He had been among the many Englishmen who
visited Paris during the short cessation of hostilities after the battle
of Leipzig in 1814 ; and he seems, on the evidence of this picture, to
have extended his tour on that occasion as far as the Rhine. When
in Paris, too, he had made the most of his time ; endeavouring, in his
own way, to profit by the wondrous collection of masterpieces of art
brought together at the Louvre by the Emperor Bonaparte, which
had not yet been dispersed.
Glover painted a large canvas there in the autumn of 1814. It
was not a copy from any one master, but a composition of the
eclectic kind. He went about from one picture to another, striving
to combine in his own work the various excellences of the great
masters. The result was hung in the biennial exhibition of that
Cir. II MEMBERS OF THE OLD SOCIETY 305
year, with the works of the Parisian artists. It measured about
eight feet by six ; and he called it the Bay of Naples. It is said
to have been, after all, much of the same class as what he had
always been in the habit of painting. Stothard, R.A., on being
told what Glover had done, charact 
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